DMG Accessible shopping cart
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This is an soon to be complete demo website that will be the basis for building all our client websites. I have not yet implemented typical skip links around the shop relying on jumping to headings for information using JAWS. I would like to know you opinions on where the skip links should go? Do you think I should have "skip to search" "skip to navigation" or should these be marked up as headings? Many sites have "skip to accessibility" help but I hoping not to include one because the site will be user friendly enough.
I have worked hard in making the most accessible cart I know and hope by posting here we can learn from each other. The cart also has headings enabling you to jump directly to the total price <h2> and the price is consistently a <h2> on product pages. I found this really useful in JAWS rather than most other carts that require you to navigate a table here we can skip the table or jump to the heading or read headings. Please add some items to the cart and let me know what you think.
Apologies for the lack of products but some products can be found under the DMG Branded and category drill down can be found when browsing for the books category.
Please read:
Some registration pages are incomplete using old code and possibly pop-ups and JS that will only work in IE. I hoping to fix theses pages by the time most of read this.
URL: http://shop.demosites.co.uk/...
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Johan De Silva / Portfolio | Place of Work @Flipside | Read my movie reviews punk!
Last edited by Johan007 on 19 Dec 2007 02:16 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Just a few observations/questions:
- I notice that shipping is added after you checkout. Generally, customers prefer to know how much they will pay for shipping as early as possible, so I would recommend displaying shipping in the shopping cart page if possible.
- One thing I'm implementing on the site I'm working on: adding a "summary" attribute to the cart table which gives the total number of items in the cart, the shipping cost and the total cost. This could help screen reader users who want a quick overview of their purchases without navigating the entire cart table.
- With more than one item in the cart, the update buttons don't seem to work. Also, I notice that each item has its own update button, but that pressing any of these would update all changes made to any item in the cart. This seems a little confusing. Perhaps you could have just one update button for the whole cart?
- I wonder if "Qty." should be marked up as an abbreviation? I choose to do so, although I suspect that it is comprehensible enough to most users that it does not need to be.
- Why do you display the catalogue number? I don't immediately see how this information is helpful to the user; perhaps I've missed something?
- It might be a good idea to add links to each of the products in the cart. This way, if someone thinks, "What did I get that for?" or "Is that the one with feature X? I can't remember..." they can just go straight to the item page. to find out
All this aside, this seems to be a very well-conceived, accessible cart, and it is clear that you have put some serious thought into it.
Last edited by Jordan Gray on 14 Dec 2007 01:18 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Fixed thanks. I will have to see the how screen reader would handle having one button but I should think it is ok.
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Johan De Silva / Portfolio | Place of Work @Flipside | Read my movie reviews punk!
Last edited by Johan007 on 17 Dec 2007 03:02 pm; edited 1 time in total
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I'm really hoping that more people will comment about this, because I feel that the shopping cart is one of the hardest things to get right for AT users, and thus could benefit most from scrutiny.
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On the DMG Branded page, the breadcrumb says this:
| Quote: |
| home > DMG Branded |
On the DMG Poker Chip page, the product image has blank alt text. The product description text does not describe the chip in much detail:
| Quote: |
| Quality poker chip with the DMG logo on it. |
The Shopping Basket has a data table using excellent markup. But why would you write "Qty." instead of "Quantity"? There's a text box and two graphical buttons in that column. There's plenty of space for the header to say "Quantity"!
When the Shopping Basket has no items, it says this:
| Quote: |
| Your Shopping basket is empty!
Please click here to return to the Home Page. |
Also, you cannot actually click on the "click here" part of the last sentence. I'd suggest something like this:
| Quote: |
| Your Shopping Basket is empty!
Return to the Home Page. |
I looked at the Sport and Leisure page. It's inconsistent with the layout I had seen until then and looked really complicated. Since the markup is brilliantly lightweight, I don't think you need to bread sections down into subsections and sub-subsections. I'd suggest using longer product listings and paginate them at 50 items or something. If a section has a small number of subsections and they each contain lots of products, you could make the subsections into sections.
For example, the "Sports and Leisure" section which contains 3 subsections:
- Leisure
- Sports
- Travel
I think it would work well as a fluid layout, keep it centred but set the column widths in percentages. This way, wide browsers (1024px to 1280px and above) would get more products per row than narrow browsers (800px). This would make better use of the available space.
The markup is excellent, although perhaps a bit heavy on the class attributes and <div> elements. But I think you're doing an excellent job overall.
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| Cerbera wrote: |
| For the shop to be accessible to people who cannot see the image, the alt text for the product could be a description of how it looks. If they don't know how it looks, I imagine they couldn't be sure it would make a suitable gift for someone who could see it? |
| Cerbera wrote: |
| The markup is excellent, although perhaps a bit heavy on the class attributes and <div> elements. |
I mean I could make more inline elements all block level and style them for this design but I want the options to style client carts via CSS without having to change the markup (much) and the extra divs are in there as extra options such as containers or alternative font decorations... trust me 
You will love the registration forms markup... not a single div. (edit: a few clearing div's I could fix but I think they are best for compatibility)
Most of your other points are fixed, or now in the process of being so. Some of the category drill downs have been designed to drill down forever.
Thank again.
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Johan De Silva / Portfolio | Place of Work @Flipside | Read my movie reviews punk!
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