@mbrsolution,
An example might be when something is added to the cart and customer is taken to the shopping cart page. When you run the WAVE toolbar addon for Chrome, it will throw accessibility errors, indicating that a customer with visual disabilities will have (potential) problems with the page.
For instance:
#1 – The cart icon – If you inspect the html with developer tools, you’ll see the link for the icon and a title for the image, but no alt text=”shopping cart icon” which lets a disabled customer know exactly where they’re at when using a screen reader.
#2 – Table column headers – In the table that shows the item name, id, and quantities, the last column in the table (which is only used for “Total at the bottom of table) has no column label. This will stop a text reader mid-purchase, possibly causing customer to lose their place. The last thing you want when a customer is ready to buy, is for them to lose their place.
Losing place = lost sale.
Even a column header with an aria-labeledby label that indicates an empty or placeholder column is preferable to a completely empty column header. It will simply let the screen-reader know that it’s okay to move on to the next field in the flow.
It may seem like I’m being “picky,” but WCAG 2.0 compliance (which is what the WAVE toolbar helps developers with), is becoming more commonplace, and even mandatory, in many parts of the world. This is especially true for business websites in the EU, and the US is following suit. If a site is non-compliant, licensing issues are affected, so the WCAG 2 guidelines are very important, not just to me and other site owners, but to you and your customers as well.
Hope that helps.
