Does the European Accessibility Act apply to my online store?

If you sell products or services to consumers in the EU online, it most likely does. The rules for services exempt microenterprises: fewer than 10 people and no more than €2 million in annual turnover or balance sheet total.

Is a Lighthouse score of 100 enough to be compliant?

No. A score of 100 means the automated checks passed. Problems like a checkout you cannot finish with a keyboard need manual testing.

Do accessibility overlay widgets make a store compliant?

No. An overlay adds a toolbar on top of the page, but the problems in the code stay where they are.

101 EU online stores checked for the EAA: 93% have accessibility gaps

We ran a free automated accessibility check on the homepages of 101 online stores in 14 EU countries. Here is what fails most often and how to fix it.

The European Accessibility Act has applied to online stores since 28 June 2025. If you sell to consumers in the EU, your shop has to be usable by people who rely on screen readers, keyboards, zoom and high contrast. Only microenterprises (fewer than 10 people and no more than €2 million a year) are exempt from the rules for services.

More than a year later, how are real stores doing? In November 2026 we ran the same free check that powers our EAA check tool on the homepages of 102 online stores in 14 EU countries: large retailers and smaller direct-to-consumer brands.

Short version: 94 of the 101 stores we could test had at least one accessibility problem that an automated check can find on the homepage alone.

How we checked

For every store we tested the homepage on a mobile phone profile, because that is how most people shop.

Accessibility audit. Google Lighthouse through PageSpeed Insights. It runs the axe rules and gives a score from 0 to 100. One store did not load in Lighthouse, so this part covers 101 stores.
Homepage HTML. We looked for a link to an accessibility statement, the page language, the shop platform and accessibility overlay widgets. 29 stores blocked automated requests, so this part covers 66 stores.

Two limits matter. Automated checks only catch part of the problems: things like a checkout you cannot finish with a keyboard need a person to test them. And a homepage is not the whole shop. So treat these numbers as a floor, not a full audit. We do not name any store in this report.

The headline numbers

94 of 101 stores (93%) had at least one automated accessibility issue on the homepage.
The median Lighthouse accessibility score was 91 out of 100. 45 stores scored below 90, 10 below 80. 13 stores scored a full 100.
A store had 3.4 different issue types on its homepage on average.
45 of 66 stores (68%) linked an accessibility statement from the homepage. 21 (32%) did not.
Only 4 of 66 stores had no automated issue and a statement link. The other 62 had one gap or both.

What fails most often

Most of these problems live in the shop theme, so one fix repairs every page.

Links have no name (43% of stores). A screen reader hears "link" with no idea where it goes. Usually icon links: cart, wishlist, social icons.
Button names don't match their visible text (40% of stores). A voice-control user says "Add to bag", but the button is named something else, so nothing happens.
Text is too faint to read (37% of stores). Grey text on white, prices and labels below the 4.5:1 contrast ratio.
Buttons and links are too small to tap (30% of stores). Targets under 24 by 24 pixels with no space around them.
Buttons have no name (26% of stores). Icon buttons (menu, search, close) with nothing for a screen reader to read.
Headings skip levels (23% of stores). The page jumps from h1 to h4, so screen reader users lose the page outline.
Photos have no description (16% of stores). Product images without alt text.
Zoom is blocked on phones (13% of stores). The viewport tag stops people from pinching to zoom.

Platforms

Shopify stores averaged a score of 93 (12 stores), Next.js storefronts 93 (7), and stores where we could not tell the platform 87 (43). Magento averaged 79, but we only had 3 Magento stores, so read that as a hint, not a result. The sample per country was too small to rank countries.

Only 2 of 66 stores used an accessibility overlay widget. That is a good sign: an overlay adds a toolbar on top of the page, but it does not fix the code underneath, and it does not make a store compliant on its own.

What to do if you run an online store

Run the free check on your own homepage and a product page: watershowdigital.com/eaa-check. It shows each problem in plain words with the exact element and a fix.
Fix the theme-level issues first: names for icon links and buttons, contrast of text and prices, tap target size, and the zoom setting in the viewport tag.
Publish an accessibility statement and link it from the footer of every page. The check page has a free generator for it.
Test the parts no automated tool can see: the checkout with a keyboard only, and with a screen reader.

If you would rather hand it over, I do an accessibility audit for €99 and fixes from €199, with a fixed quote first.