Accessibility in German e-commerce: 300 online shops tested
Fifteen months after the European Accessibility Act took effect, we ran an automated WCAG 2.1 AA check on the home pages of 300 German online shops. The tool found at least one violation on 270 of them and a critical one on more than half. The numbers, the method and what they tell you.
Germany's accessibility law for products and services, the BFSG, has applied since 28 June 2025, with no transition period for online shops. It implements the European Accessibility Act. Fifteen months in, we wanted to see where German e-commerce stands. On 23 September 2026 we tested the home pages of 300 German online shops with the same engine that powers many accessibility browser extensions.
The headline: the tool found at least one WCAG 2.1 A or AA violation on 270 of 300 shops, 90 percent. On 158 shops, 53 percent, at least one of them was rated critical.
The numbers at a glance
| Measurement | Shops | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Home pages tested | 300 | 100% |
| At least one automatically detected violation | 270 | 90.0% |
| At least one critical violation | 158 | 52.7% |
| No automatically detected violation | 30 | 10.0% |
| Link to accessibility information on the home page | 153 | 51.0% |
The median home page broke three different rules, and the median number of affected elements was fourteen.
The most common issues
| axe-core rule | What it checks | Shops | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| color-contrast | Text contrast against the background (4.5 : 1, large text 3 : 1) | 197 | 65.7% |
| link-name | Links with a discernible name, such as icons without text | 162 | 54.0% |
| image-alt | Alt text for images | 69 | 23.0% |
| button-name | Buttons with a discernible name | 56 | 18.7% |
| meta-viewport | Zoom on phones is not blocked | 46 | 15.3% |
| listitem | List items inside a real list | 38 | 12.7% |
| aria-required-children | ARIA roles with their required children | 36 | 12.0% |
| list | Lists that only contain list items | 32 | 10.7% |
| nested-interactive | No controls nested inside controls | 30 | 10.0% |
| link-in-text-block | Links in body text recognisable without color | 30 | 10.0% |
Three things stand out.
Contrast is the classic. Almost two thirds of home pages have text too light for its background, usually grey prices, notes under products or white type on bright images. We had exactly this issue on our own site; the story is in An accessible website: what the rules actually ask for.
Icons without names. Cart, wishlist, account and search often appear as an icon only. To a screen reader such a link is just "link". 162 shops had at least one unnamed link on the home page and 56 at least one unnamed button, often right where people buy.
Zoom blocked. 46 shops, about one in seven, prevent pinch zoom on phones. It takes one line in the page head to fix, and it hits people with low vision hardest.
Pointing to accessibility information
Businesses in scope have to provide information on accessibility. We checked whether the home page contains a link whose text or address includes "barrierefrei", "barrierearm" or "accessibility". That was true for 153 of 300 shops, about half. A missing link on the home page is not a violation by itself, since the information may also sit in the terms and conditions.
By shop platform
| Platform | Shops | With violation |
|---|---|---|
| No platform detected (mostly custom builds) | 112 | 95 |
| Shopify | 67 | 62 |
| JTL-Shop | 31 | 30 |
| Magento / Adobe Commerce | 25 | 23 |
| Shopware | 23 | 21 |
| WooCommerce | 12 | 11 |
| Salesforce Commerce Cloud | 11 | 10 |
| OXID | 9 | 8 |
| plentymarkets, Gambio, PrestaShop | 10 | 10 |
The groups are small, and the platform alone decides little. Issues come mostly from themes, extensions and the content a shop adds itself. No platform stops anyone from putting grey text on a grey background.
How we measured
- Sample: From the Tranco list of 20 September 2026 (ID 64X5X) we fetched every .de domain in order, 5,982 in total. An online shop meant a German-language home page with a shop platform signature plus a cart or prices, or without a detectable platform, a cart link and at least five euro prices. The first 300 matches form the sample, from rank 2,122 to rank 244,697.
- Exclusion: One shop returned a bot wall instead of its home page and was replaced by the next in line.
- Test: Each home page loaded once in headless Chrome, 1366 by 900 pixels, German language, on 23 September 2026 between 10:29 and 10:48 German time. Then axe-core 4.13.0 ran all WCAG 2.0 and 2.1 rules at levels A and AA. Nothing was clicked, including cookie banners.
- Tools and data: The scripts and raw data are kept by us and available to journalists and researchers on request. We do not name individual shops.
What the numbers do not say
An automated test covers only part of the criteria. Whether the keyboard reaches everything, whether the order makes sense and whether checkout works with a screen reader takes a human. So the 30 shops without detected violations are not automatically accessible, while the other 270 definitely miss the requirements.
We tested the home page only, usually with the cookie banner open, because that is what every first visit looks like. Product pages, cart and checkout may be better or worse. And the sample consists of well-visited shops. Whether any of them are exempt as microenterprises cannot be told from outside; given their size, it is unlikely for most.
What shops can do now
- Measure contrast. Every text color against its actual background, including prices, notes and type on images.
- Give icons a name. Cart, account, wishlist and search need text a screen reader can read out.
- Allow zoom. Remove
maximum-scaleanduser-scalable=nofrom the viewport tag. - Add alt text, product images and banners with text first.
- Link the accessibility statement where people find it, for example in the footer.
If you want to know where your shop stands: our accessibility audit checks it automatically and by hand and tells you what to fix first.
Sources
How current this post is
First published with measurements from 23 September 2026.
Common questions about the study
How many German online shops are accessible?
That cannot be fully measured automatically. In our check of 300 home pages in September 2026, axe-core found at least one WCAG 2.1 A or AA violation on 270 shops, 90 percent. Only 30 home pages were free of automatically detectable issues, which on its own does not prove full accessibility.
What is the most common issue?
Low contrast. On 197 of 300 shops, almost two thirds, the home page had text below 4.5 to 1 against its background. Next come links without a discernible name (162 shops) and images without alt text (69 shops).
Which shops were tested?
The 300 highest-ranked German-language online shops with a .de domain in the Tranco list of 20 September 2026, a public ranking of the most visited domains. A shop meant a home page with a cart and prices or with the signature of a shop platform.
Does this matter for a shop outside Germany?
Yes, if it sells to consumers in the EU. The European Accessibility Act applies to services offered to EU consumers wherever the business is based, and every member state measures against WCAG 2.1 AA.