eBay have sponsored Purple Tuesday, a change programme that aims to improve customer experience for disabled people. This year research has revealed that UK businesses lost out on almost £412 million during the pandemic because their websites are inaccessible to disabled people.
Are your eBay listings accessible?
eBay are urging sellers on their platform to see what changes they can make to how they list and describe their items, which will make them more accessible to a wider audience. Sellers are advised to avoid small font sizes, use plain but descriptive language, avoid light colours in text and keep animations simple or ditch them altogether.
“Purple Tuesday is important to eBay because our purpose as a business is to create economic opportunity for all, and accessibility is a fundamental pillar of that. We’ve made great progress over the last 10 years or so, and through partnering with Purple we’re committing to continually adapt and evolve our site as we progress on this journey with them.
“We know that small changes can make a world of difference to people with a disability who use our platform, and we would encourage any retailers with an online presence especially to do the same.”
– Eve Williams, CMO of eBay UK
Are your websites accessible?
It’s not just your online marketplace listings that matter, your websites do too! The research found that more than one in three disabled people had difficulties using websites during the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, at a time when the economy increasingly relied on online sales and many disabled people were asked to shield. 15% had problems reading websites and 18% simply gave up using a site. More than half (54%) of those who had difficulties did not then spend money they had planned to, leaving millions in the pockets of disabled people instead of in the economy.
Today Purple is calling on even more organisations to urgently review their services for disabled customers, to help them take advantage of the £274 billion Purple Pound – the combined spending power of disabled people and their families.
