Auction site wins award for assisting the visually impaired

(Peter Kirillov/shutterstock.com)

On October 11 auction site eBay was awarded E-commerce News's Junkie award for the month of September; the online auction site was rewarded for its services to the visually impaired following developments to its platform in August.

The monthly Junkie award is bestowed upon internet retailers which make significant developments to the industry by independent e-commerce news website Ecommerce Junkie. Though the awards take into consideration deals and promotions they are more focused on commerce websites that enhance the consumer experience.

Previous winners of the award include BadCustomer.com, an American website designed to alert customers to untrustworthy or unreliable retailers and online shoe store Zappos.com which showed outstanding customer service by honoring the rights of its customers when a computer glitch offered goods on its sister site 6pm.com for far less than their intended retail value.

EBay developed features of its site so that the visually impaired could place bids or sell items using just the keyboard and navigate the site using screen-reader technology which explains what is displayed on the users monitor. 

Other internet retailers such as Amazon.com and Apple's iTunes also provide settings to ease the use of their sites for those with visual impairments, as have many large supermarkets across Europe and the US.

According to data from internet monitoring site Experian Hitwise, eBay and Amazon (along with its regional subsidiaries such as amazon.fr in France) are two of the most visited online retailers across the globe.

For more information about the Junkie awards see: http://ecommercejunkie.com/
For more information about Amazon for the visually impaired see: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/h.html
Forinformation on how to use software for the visually impaired on iTunes see: http://www.apple.com/accessibility/itunes/vision.html

Information about software and other facilities for the visually impaired can be found on the website for the World Blind Union at: http://www.worldblindunion.org/en/