Playbook, online store
The size chart is a photograph and the photograph has no words
On a shop, the information that decides a purchase has a habit of ending up inside a picture. The size chart is a JPEG. The spec table is a screenshot from a supplier. The delivery zone grid was made in a spreadsheet and exported. Everybody using a screen reader hits the same wall, and so does anything that reads text, which is the part that makes this a shared problem rather than a compliance chore.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for accessibility requests holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- The purchase-deciding detail on a shop is disproportionately locked inside images: the measurements, the specification, the care symbols, the delivery grid, and often the returns table too, all published as pictures with nothing behind them.
- The same wall stops the assistant, because it reads text, so a shop whose detail lives in images has an assistant that cannot answer any of those questions either, and one piece of work fixes both audiences at once.
- Requests here split into two unrelated things, help using the site and the accessibility of a product itself, and answering them as one produces a reply that misses both, because the first needs an alternative route and the second needs a specification.
- A complaint about an inaccessible shopfront is a legal matter in a number of markets, so a defensive or reassuring reply in a chat window is materially worse than no reply, and this is one of the few intents where speed matters less than not answering.
How it arrives
- is your site screen reader friendly
- the size chart is an image can you read it out
- can i place an order over the phone instead
- can you send the instructions in large print
- i cant use a mouse can i still check out
- is there a text version of the spec sheet
What has to be indexed for this to work
| Every chart and table you publish as an image, transcribed | The size charts, the specification tables, the delivery grid and the care symbols, typed out as real tables. This is the single highest value piece of work in this whole file, because it serves a screen reader, an assistant and a search engine with one effort. |
|---|---|
| An alternative route to placing an order | Whether somebody can order by phone or by email, what hours, and what they need to hand. If there is no alternative, the honest answer is that there is not one yet, and that answer is at least actionable. |
| What you actually know about your own checkout | Whether it can be completed by keyboard alone, whether any step depends on a drag or a hover, and any known problems you have not yet fixed. Write what is true. A claim of accessibility that fails at the payment step is worse than an admission. |
| Where an accessibility complaint goes, and who answers it | A named route with a person behind it, separate from general support. These need a considered reply from somebody who can commit to a fix, and they do not survive being answered in the same queue as a delivery query. |
The reply
The size chart is published as an image on the product pages, so I cannot read it, but the same measurements are typed out in full on our sizing page and I can quote any of them to you [1]. If there is a chart or a table anywhere on the site you cannot get at, tell me which product and I will read the text version if we have one. Orders can also be placed by email during the hours on our contact page, with the item name and the size you want, and somebody will take it from there [2]. If something in the checkout itself is blocking you, that is worth reporting rather than working around, and I can pass it to the team who deal with it.
It admits the image problem plainly and in the same breath points at the fix, so the visitor gets an answer rather than an acknowledgement. Offering to quote specific measurements keeps the conversation useful instead of ending it with a link. The alternative ordering route is given with what to include, and the checkout problem is invited rather than deflected, because a blocked checkout is a thing the shop needs told.
Where it stops
The trigger. The visitor cannot complete a step on the site, asks for a format the material does not exist in, or is making a complaint about the accessibility of the shop itself.
That should go to somebody who can actually change it rather than stopping with me. Leave your name, an email and what you ran into, including the page if you know it, and it goes to the team who handle this. If you would rather order in the meantime, say what you are after and I will pass that on at the same time.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never say the site is accessible, or that it meets a standard, unless the indexed material says exactly that, because the claim is checkable and the person asking is checking it.
- Never quote a measurement or a specification that only exists inside an image, since an image the crawler could not read is not material the assistant has and the number would be invented.
- Never suggest getting a friend or a family member to help, which is the most common reflex here and reads as being told to go away.
- Never argue with, minimise or apologise your way out of a complaint about the site, since it may be a legal matter and the transcript is part of it.
Questions
- Can it read the text out of our size chart image?
- No. It works from text, so an image is invisible to it in the same way it is to a screen reader. That symmetry is the useful part: the work that makes the chart answerable for a customer makes it answerable for the assistant, and neither is possible without it.
- Where should we start if we only do one thing?
- Transcribe the size and specification charts into real tables on real pages. It is a day of typing, it removes the most common blocker for people using a screen reader, and it unlocks the highest volume question the assistant currently has to refuse.
- Should it try to solve an accessibility complaint?
- No. It should take the details and route them, saying nothing about whether the site complies with anything. These want a reply from somebody who can commit to a change, and a friendly chat answer in the meantime becomes the thing that gets quoted.
Keep reading
- Everything for a online storeDelivery cut-offs, the returns window and restock questions get asked before purchase. The one thing an assistant cannot do is find an order.
- Handling accessibility requests in generalTwo different things arrive as one message. A published accessibility statement answers the first. The second is a request, and it needs a person.
- They have read the policy already. Quoting it back is the wrong moveBy the time it is a complaint it is the third contact, the policy has been read, and what is wanted is a name and a decision.
- There is no such thing as a size on a general storeOne store, a dozen suppliers, a dozen charts that disagree. What size means changes by aisle, and the chart is usually a picture.
- Sending them to the manufacturer is the reflex that causes the complaintA maker's guarantee and a seller's own obligation are different things, and pointing the customer at the manufacturer is often wrong.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.