Pharmacist and two prescritpion containers.

Accessibility Comparison of Two Pharmacies — a Comparison Study

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Overview

For many, online tasks like banking, social communication, learning, and shopping can be rewarding. For individuals with visual impairments, these same tasks can have barriers. Our report looks at detailing the problems encountered by the blind or visually impaired individuals when accessing two major online pharmacy websites, Walgreens.com and CVS.com. In order to find and explain existed issues, a comparative usability testing study was conducted with four tasks for each website.

People with visual impairments want to find what they need indepently. But in an e-commerce world, online pharmacies do not have a good sense of website accessibility. In our study, we will evaluate efficiency, by demonstrating common tasks on both websites. In addition, we hope to uncover any obstacles people with visual impairments encounter on these websites. Finally, we hope to improve the accessibility of these websites through our findings and bring pleasant and positive experiences to people with visual impairments.

Methods

We recruited four participants with visual impairments, three through The Chicago Lighthouse and one co-worker of a researcher. Participants needed online shopping experience through using screen-reader technologies.

The participants’ age ranged from 18 to 69 years old. All participants used their own personal computers with installed assistive technologies. All three participants who were blind used JAWS and one with low vision used ZoomText. All participants have used the Internet to make online purchases. Three participants had used Walgreens website, half had used CVS website, and one did not use either.

Each usability session lasted approximately one hour to 90 minutes. We conducted a two-part study: (1) a usability test on two nationally accessible online pharmacies (Walgreen and CVS) and (2) interviewed the participants about their experiences using both websites through post-task survey questions.

Participants performed four identical tasks on both Walgreens.com and CVS.com. They performed all the tasks beginning with Walgreens.com. The participants were read aloud a moderated script that described a scenario which identified four tasks.

We instructed each participant to demonstrate: (1) how they would locate their local online pharmacy, (2) setup an appointment from the local pharmacy for an annual flu shot, (3) view the local store’s online weekly ads, and (4) locate any brand of Vitamin C and add it to their online cart.

Task Findings

Store Location

  • Variety of paths
    • Google
    • Scanning for the headings within the context of a page
    • Scanning links using JAWS/Selecting the letter “L” to search
  • Task completion times
    • 9:41 on Walgreens.com
    • 4:31 on CVS.com
  • Stratifications
    • three of the four participants responded to the task being neither difficult to somewhat easy, while one responded to it being somewhat difficult
    • the overall ease of completing the task and the time the task took to complete. Three of four participants found it to be somewhat satisfied, with one response of somewhat dissatisfied.

Make an appointment

  • Task completion times
    • 14:28 on Walgreens.com
    • 6:53 on CVS.com
  • Stratifications
    • All the participants rated the task was difficult on Walgreens.com, all failed
    • 3 out of 4 participants thought this task was difficult on CVS.com (1 finally succeeded in making an appointment at a local store from the CVS website after spending more than 19 minutes. The only one participant who thought this task easy took 3:46 to find that CVS had walk-in clinics and got satisfied with this finding.)
  • Pain Point
    • JAWS couldn’t interpret date-picker, so users couldn’t choose the date efficiently

Finding Weekly Ads

  • Task completion times
    • 1:46 on Walgreens.com
    • 0:43 on CVS.com
  • How
    • Previously scanned
  • Stratifications
    • Three of participants replied that the task was easy and were  satisfied with the ease and the completion time of the task. Only one participant thought the task was difficult and was not satisfied with the ease and the completion time of the task.
  • Pain Point
    • JAWS couldn’t read PDF or pictures, so users could get to weekly ads page but couldn’t read the ads

Purchase a Vitamin C

  • Task completion times
    • 8:05 on Walgreens.com
    • 4:55 on CVS.com
  • Stratifications
    • Most participants found this task challenging on both websites
  • Pain Point
    • JAWS goes through webpage contents from top to bottom - left to right, so participants had to first go through all the filters and category which were located at the left of the page before they actually getting to the search result list.

Discussion

Obstacles for people with visual impairment from both Walgreens.com & CVS.com

  • Unlabeled links or graphics: Screen-readers were not able to describe the weekly ads to them.
  • Non-meaningful Headings: Both comparative websites used the term “store locator” to locate an individual store. So, the participants used to look for a store by clicking”L” instead of “S”.In other words,no match between the the heading and its job.
  • Tricky or redundant links: Some terms like “Seasonal flu”, ”adult immunization schedule” can be confusing for people with visual impairment.
  • Unrecognized PDFs and pictures: The technology used to display the local store’s weekly ads on the comparative websites did not allow the assistive technologies (JAWS) to interpret the content.
  • Unreadable maps:The assistive technology”JAWS”was not able to read the maps even though some participants found the location.

Limitations

  • The number of participants in our comparative study was too small.
  • The age gap between participants were huge.
  • There were hardware differences between the devices the participants used.
  • The order of task is partially disordered.
  • Most participants have used different versions of JAWS screen reader. On the other hand, one participant has used an expensive tool “ZoomText” screen reader.

Future work

  • Recruit more participants with longer preparation time
  • Exclude the differences from age, hardware and software
  • Do pilot testing
  • Conduct interview about the ideal pharmacy website for people with visual impairment

Documentation

  • Full SIGCHI report available upon request.

Team