The State of EU E-commerce Accessibility 2026 — Cirv Index

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Report · 2026

The State of EU E-commerce Accessibility

We scanned 55 European online stores against WCAG 2.1 A/AA — the standard behind the European Accessibility Act. Here's what we found.

Download the PDF Updated 2026-06-17

55 stores analysed

39/100 average score

65% graded D or F

71% fail heading hierarchy

The headline

Europe's online stores are not ready . The average homepage scores just 39/100 on an automated WCAG 2.1 A/AA check, and 65% are graded D or F . The single most common failure is heading hierarchy , affecting 71% of the stores we could scan. With the European Accessibility Act now enforceable, these are not cosmetic issues — they are legal exposure.

Grade distribution

Grade A5<br>Grade B6<br>Grade C8<br>Grade D4<br>Grade F32

The most common failures

Share of scanned stores failing each WCAG check (homepage):

Heading Hierarchy39<br>Link Text38<br>Form Labels24<br>Alt Text14<br>Color Contrast2

Best and worst

Best in class<br>A asambeauty.com 100/100<br>A ellos.se 100/100<br>A fahrrad.de 100/100<br>A home24.de 100/100<br>A privalia.com 100/100

Needs the most work<br>F hidden — run a scan 2/100<br>F hidden — run a scan 5/100<br>F hidden — run a scan 5/100<br>F hidden — run a scan 5/100<br>F hidden — run a scan 5/100

What this means for the EAA

The European Accessibility Act requires e-commerce services sold into the EU to meet accessibility standards aligned with WCAG 2.1 AA. Non-compliance carries enforcement and penalty risk that varies by member state. An automated homepage scan catches only ~30–40% of issues — so a low score is a near-certain sign of deeper problems, and even a high score warrants a manual audit.

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Method: automated WCAG 2.1 A/AA scan of each store's public homepage. See methodology. Citable data: data.json. Not legal advice.