Accessibility on Your Web Store: Q&A With a Product Manager

We recently released Galaxy version 7.8.0.9. As part of this version, the eGalaxy Web Store now has an accessibility option that attractions can leverage to make their web store accessibility compliant according to the WCAG standard. Accessibility is nothing new, but we understand it’s a topic that many attractions are just beginning to examine, particularly in the United States. So we sat down with Dave Carey, the Product Manager at Gateway Ticketing Systems responsible for getting accessibility into this recent version, and spoke with him about why accessibility is important and how attractions can start or continue their journey towards an accessible web presence. Here’s what he had to say.

Why is accessibility important and why have we made the commitment at Gateway to work on the accessibility of Galaxy?

First and foremost, accessibility is important because we want guests with a physical or invisible disability to be able to use our customers’ web stores just as anyone would. We’ve made an internal commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion at Gateway, and creating accessibility expertise within our organization and working on the accessibility of our product falls within the scope of this commitment.

Not only are we encouraging our customers to make the same commitment, but we’re also encouraging them to consider the financial implications of accessibility.

This is an audience that spends money, and so attractions are losing out on revenue if their site is not accessible. It’s estimated that non-accessible sites lose as much as $500 billion a year worldwide. More than 70% of people that need accessibility tools will leave a website immediately when they realize it’s not accessible.

What are the legal implications for not adopting accessibility compliance?

In the United States we don’t have 100% clear cut laws yet governing accessibility on the web. But we do have the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Justice Department has determined that the rules set forth in the ADA extend to website accessibility. There have been several high-profile out of court accessibility settlements, none more prominent than the one brought forth by the National Federation for the Blind against Target Corporation all the way back in 2008. So while regulations remain up for interpretation, there has been precedent set.

In the UK and EU, laws using the WC3 standards for website accessibility as their foundation are already in place and being enforced.

Some of our customers in the UK and the US already receive letters basically letting them know their site is out of compliance. You can look at standards for online privacy and data protection like GDPR – which were issued in the EU and influenced similar standards in states like California – and assume the same could happen with accessibility standards in certain states or nationally here in the US. I think we’re going to see a lot of movement in the next couple years on this in the States, so it’s best to get ahead of it now.

What have we done at Gateway to address accessibility compliance on the web?

We took time to study our web presence and developed a corporate approach. First, we looked at our corporate website from an accessibility standpoint because what’s more important than our public facing site in this regard.

If you visit our corporate website today, you’ll see a tool that’s available which you can use to make the site more compliant against the WCAG standards. This tool will basically alter the website to accommodate any challenges a user has whether that be increasing contrasts or by making the site better for screen readers.

We’re now in the process of making our eGalaxy Web Store product accessibility ready so that all the code in the background is updated and prepared for when one of our customers wants to make their web store accessible. The latest version of our Web Store has our first set of accessibility updates. But the next step is encouraging our customers to move to that version, and then re-theming the store with the new accessibility features in mind.

How can Gateway customers get access to an accessible web store?

We recently released eGalaxy Web Store version 7.8.0.9 which has the accessibility considerations built into it. Customers will need to upgrade to that version first.

But what is the undertaking for an attraction to make their web store accessibility compliant?

It’s not a big impact to attractions in terms of their day-to-day operations, but it will require some amount of collaboration and feedback between the attraction and Gateway on the new theme. While not exclusively, much of making a web store accessible has to do with color selection and contrast settings. When these adjustments are made, the theme of the web store doesn’t match perfectly with the theme of the attraction’s main website which is leading to the ticket store. Attractions need to consider making their corporate site compliant too.

Then we need to start considering what we do with attractions that change their web store theme frequently throughout the year – say for the summer months, or Halloween, or the holidays. We need to have the conversations and do the work to make sure the web store is compliant every time we update the theme.

What is the future of accessibility for Gateway and Galaxy?

We are in the beginning phase of learning about accessibility requirements, and we know we have a long way to go. But we’re committed to taking that journey. Obviously, the coding and theming of the Web Store has come first. Now we need to start collaborating with our customers to roll this initial phase out and work on maintaining it.

We also intend to increase our knowledge level at the company in terms of accessibility. We want a resource or resources within Gateway to be able to partner and consult with our customers on an expert level to get them where they need to be from an accessibility standpoint.

Then of course there is our on-site product, which serves end-users that are guest facing at an attraction and in the back-office. How can we make all Galaxy menus accessible for end users? How can we make the back-end interfaces accessible? These are the things we are thinking about for future phases of our commitment and I’m excited to see where we take it.

If you’re a Gateway customer and you want or need an accessible web store, reach out to your Business Solutions Manager about upgrading to Galaxy 7.8.0.9 or contact us at info@gatewayticketing.com.