I was disappointed that your First Looks reviews of Hybris Shop Professional 2.0, Off-Line Pro 1.0, and ShopFactory Professional made no mention of the accessibility, or compliance with W3C standards, of the sites produced with these products. (This information was also lacking in your Storefront Builders review of July 2000.)
Many people are unwilling to run the latest versions of browsers with potentially insecure client-side scripting enabled, and some people — those on low incomes, or those using assistive technology, for example — have no choice of which hardware or browser version to use.
Business using storefront builders that produce inaccessible sites may be losing a competitive edge — and may be breaking the law. Section 21 of the Disability Discrimination Act, introduced on 1 October 1999, placed a duty on service providers to make information about their services accessible for blind and partially sighted people. Businesses who wish to build sites accessible on any browser or with assistive technology are not getting the right information from your magazine to enable them to do this.
It would be good to see PC Magazine taking a pioneering line by including people who use assistive technology or who have special needs when reviewing products, software, and websites.