Steptoe and Johnson LLP issued the following announcement on Aug. 30.
Stephanie Sheridan, chair of the firm's Retail & E-commerce Group, was quoted in an August 30 article in Grocery Dive titled "Grocers Grapple with Digital Accessibility as E-commerce Grows."
The article discusses how an online shopping boom has brought more attention – and a flurry of lawsuits – to website and app accessibility for people with disabilities while a lack of federal regulations and oversight remains, posing challenges for retailers.
"It's not a simple matter of flipping a switch and the website is magically compliant," Sheridan says.
While many companies are following guidelines published by the World Wide Web Consortium, a leading internet standards organization, the guidelines require interpretation. As such, many retailers are turning to auditing firms that specialize in digital accessibility.
Sheridan recommends grocers vet accessibility auditing firms in advance and find out if they will stand by their work if legally challenged and issue a letter of conformance, noting that firms have "mushroomed up everywhere" to monetize a growing need to help monitor websites.
"The gold standard in checking to see if a website is really compliant is [to] have a blind person go through and see what he or she encounters," she says.
The full article can be read in Grocery Dive.
Original source can be found here.
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