TRDigital accessibility in France's e-commerce sector, 2026
An automated WCAG 2.2 assessment of 24 online shop homepages, after French courts began ordering retailers to make their sites fully accessible.
Since 28 June 2025, e-commerce services offered to consumers in France must be accessible. We scanned the homepages of 24 online shops operating in France, across grocery, fashion, home, beauty and electronics, against WCAG 2.2 and classified every automatically detected barrier by criterion, principle and level. Every homepage has at least one barrier at Level A or AA, 1,037 in total. The most common problem sits in the controls shoppers use to browse and buy: buttons and links that a screen reader cannot name. Because 92% of barriers repeat an error already on the same site, a few shared components hold the key to most fixes.
1Key findings
- 24 / 24
No site is free of barriers. All 24 homepages have at least one A or AA barrier; the median site has 25, spread across 4 WCAG criteria.
- 22 / 24
Screen reader users get stuck on almost every site. Unnamed buttons and links, and controls nested inside other controls, account for 485 barriers, 47% of the total.
- 85%
Most barriers are Level A. 883 of 1,037 barriers fail the most basic level of WCAG, the level every accessibility framework builds on.
- 92%
Barriers are mostly repetition. Fixing a handful of shared components would remove most barriers on most sites.
- 32%
One site holds a third of all barriers. 331 barriers sit on a single homepage; even without it, the median site still has 23.
2Methodology
- STEP 01Select24 e-commerce sites operating in France, across grocery, fashion, home, beauty and electronics.
- STEP 02ScanEach homepage against WCAG 2.2 on 24 October 2026, with the same tool version.
- STEP 03ClassifyEvery barrier tagged by criterion, principle and level.
- STEP 04AnalyseResults grouped by topic and sector. No company is named or ranked.
Scope note. The accessibility data in this report is calculated from each company's homepage only. Pages behind login, subpages, mobile apps and documents are out of scope; results do not represent a company's digital channels as a whole.
Standard disclosure
Automated testing in this study detects only a subset of WCAG 2.2 failures. A clean automated result does not mean a site is accessible or conformant. Barriers under the Understandable principle, such as unclear instructions or unhelpful error messages, and the real behaviour of interactive components can only be assessed through manual review, which is outside the scope of this report. Findings describe detectable barriers, not legal compliance.
3Results
3.1 Barriers by WCAG principle
WCAG groups its requirements under four principles. On French e-commerce homepages, Perceivable and Robust together account for 83% of all barriers.
Perceivable and Robust hold 83% of barriers
Share of 1,037 barriers, with the number of sites affected
85% are Level A
Level A is the most basic level of WCAG
Contrast and touch targets lead AA
Composition of the 154 Level AA barriers
3.2 Barriers by topic
9 in 10 e-commerce sites have screen reader barriers
E-commerce homepages failing each topic, shown per 10 sites
Screen readers. 485 barriers on 22 sites come from unnamed buttons and links, and from controls nested inside other buttons. A screen reader announces them only as "button" or "link", often on the very controls used to add to basket or open a product.
Page structure. 203 structure barriers appear on 16 sites; 120 of them are list items placed outside a proper list, typically in menus and product carousels.
Images. 158 barriers on 10 sites are images without a text description and image links without a name. Product imagery is central to e-commerce, which makes this gap more costly than in other sectors.
3.3 Distribution across sites
Every site has barriers; a quarter have more than 50
Number of e-commerce homepages by count of A and AA barriers
of all barriers sit on a single homepage (331 of 1,037)
of barriers repeat an error already present on the same site
median barriers per 100 elements examined (range 0.1 to 19.4)
4Priorities for remediation
Five targeted fixes cover 999 of the 1,037 barriers detected. The coverage column shows the cumulative share once each fix is added to those above it.
| # | Fix | Barriers · sites | Who benefits | Cumulative coverage |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Give buttons and links an accessible nameWCAG 4.1.2 · 2.4.4 | 485 · 22 sites | Screen reader users | |
| 2 | Code lists and page structure correctlyWCAG 1.3.1 | 203 · 16 sites | Screen reader users | |
| 3 | Add text alternatives to imagesWCAG 1.1.1 | 158 · 10 sites | Blind users | |
| 4 | Fix weak contrastWCAG 1.4.3 | 87 · 14 sites | Low vision, older users | |
| 5 | Make touch targets at least 24 pxWCAG 2.5.8 | 66 · 9 sites | Mobile, motor impaired |
The same fixes pay off beyond compliance: meaningful names and clean structure help search engines interpret a page, alt text makes product images easier to find, and larger touch targets cut mis-taps and abandoned baskets on mobile.
Beyond Level AA
Level AAA is not required by most regulations and is kept out of the main figures. It shows whether a site that passes AA is truly comfortable to use.
sites have touch targets below 44 × 44 px; 1,434 targets in total.
sites have text that passes AA but not the AAA 7:1 contrast ratio.
sites open links in a new tab without warning.
5Regulatory context
In France, the accessibility of online shops has moved from a regulatory principle to a court-enforced obligation. Since the EAA began to apply in June 2025, associations have taken major retailers to court, and the first ruling on the merits demands full accessibility, not most of it.
From principle to court order
Milestones for digital accessibility in French e-commerce
- Feb 2005
Disability law, article 47, sets the public-sector duty
- Apr 2019
EU adopts the European Accessibility Act directive
- Jul 2019
Duty extended to companies with turnover above EUR 250 million
- 2023
EAA transposed into French law
- Jun 2025
EAA applies to e-commerce services through the Consumer Code
- Nov 2025
Associations of visually impaired people sue four grocery retailers
- Jun 2026
Caen court orders a retailer to make its site and app fully accessible
- Sep 2026
EN 301 549 v4.1.1 published, moving to WCAG 2.2
Scope
Transposes the EAA: e-commerce services offered to consumers must be accessible; micro-enterprises are exempt. Firms above EUR 250 million turnover were already bound by the 2005 law and the RGAA.
The courts
Caen ordered one retailer to make its site and app fully accessible within six months, under a EUR 500 daily penalty. Lille dismissed a parallel urgent claim on scope grounds.
Technical basis
France assesses conformity against the RGAA, its WCAG-based framework. EN 301 549 v3.2.1 applies until v4.1.1 is cited in the EU Official Journal.
In Caen, the court rejected the argument that a declared compliance rate of 71% was enough: a site must be fully accessible. Against that bar, every homepage in this report has automatically detected barriers at Levels A and AA. This is not a compliance judgement, but it shows how far the sector is from the standard the court set.
6Implications for executives
Measure the whole purchase journey
Courts now assess full accessibility of sites and apps. Measure search, product pages, basket and checkout, not only the homepage, and document a remediation plan.
Assign a single owner
Barriers span design, content and engineering. Without an executive owner and a quarterly target, fixes lose to the campaign calendar.
Fix shared components first
With 92% of barriers repeating, buttons, links and lists in shared components carry most of them; fixing those carries into every page.
Put WCAG 2.2 AA in supplier contracts
Agencies and third-party components such as chat, cookie banners and carousels are a major source of barriers.
References
- Code de la consommation, article L412-13. Légifrance.
- Clubic. Four grocery retailers taken to court over digital discrimination, 12 November 2025.
- Handicap.fr. Lille urgent ruling on e-commerce accessibility, 7 May 2026.
- Deque. “France’s major court decision supporting digital accessibility under the EAA”, 11 June 2026.
- Handicap.fr. Caen court ruling on web accessibility, 15 June 2026.
- Village de la Justice. Analysis of the Lille decision, May 2026, June 2026.
- AccessibleEU. “The European accessibility standard EN 301 549 has been updated”, 7 September 2026.
- W3C. Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2.
- World Health Organization. Disability and health, fact sheet, March 2023.
France e-commerce sector: digital accessibility report 2026
Complete data, methodology, WCAG criteria table and appendix.
