Study · 2026-10-19
Accessibility of French online shops: 2026 study
More than a year after the European Accessibility Act took effect, we tested 240 French online shops with the same automated method: homepage, category, product page and cart. Here is what we found.
Key figures
92%
of shops publish no accessibility statement, although the law requires one.
83%
have at least one critical error that can block a purchase.
164
WCAG errors per shop (median, across 5 pages).
The median accessibility score is 10/100; 93% of shops score below 50, and only 0% have no automatically detectable errors.
The 10 most common errors
| Error | Share of shops affected |
|---|---|
| Text does not have enough contrast with its background | 89 % |
| Links have no accessible name | 76 % |
| Clickable elements cannot be used with the keyboard | 67 % |
| Keyboard focus is not visible on some elements | 58 % |
| Touch targets are too small | 48 % |
| Visible labels do not match the accessible name | 45 % |
| Images are missing alternative text | 38 % |
| Content needs horizontal scrolling on narrow screens | 35 % |
| Buttons have no accessible name | 33 % |
| Form fields have no label | 24 % |
By platform
| Platform | Shops | Median score | Median errors |
|---|---|---|---|
| PrestaShop | 95 | 9/100 | 208 |
| Shopify | 90 | 11/100 | 134 |
| WooCommerce | 34 | 11/100 | 175 |
| Magento | 17 | 18/100 | 133 |
Differences between platforms mostly reflect themes and plugins, not the platform itself.
Method
Sample: 240 .fr retail sites from the public Tranco list of most-visited domains, whose e-commerce platform could be identified. For each shop, up to 5 pages (home, category, product, cart, contact) were loaded in a real browser and tested with axe-core (WCAG 2.0, 2.1 and 2.2, levels A and AA), plus keyboard navigation and 320px reflow tests. Automated tests only catch part of the problems, so reality is likely worse than these figures. No shop is named.
Journalists and researchers: you may quote these figures with credit to StoreA11y and a link to this page. Contact: hello@storea11y.com.