State of UK Ecommerce Accessibility 2026: A Study of 115 Sites

A look at how UK ecommerce sites actually perform on accessibility, based on scans of 115 real sites carried out during 2026. This is the first UK ecommerce specific version of this kind of data we're aware of; the widely cited WebAIM Million report covers the top one million homepages generally, across all countries and site types, rather than UK ecommerce specifically.

The headline finding

97.4% of sites tested (112 of 115) had at least one Critical or Serious accessibility issue, averaging 38.4 instances per site.

In practical terms, this means almost every UK ecommerce site in this sample has at least one point where a disabled customer cannot complete part of the shopping journey the way a non-disabled customer can, and the average site has this happening dozens of times across its pages, not as a single isolated instance.

Key findings at a glance

Methodology

This is a study of 115 UK ecommerce sites, scanned during 2026 using Accessimo's own automated and manual accessibility scanning process. It is a sample, not a random or exhaustive survey of the UK ecommerce market as a whole, and the findings should be read as a snapshot of what we found in this particular set of sites, not as a formal statistical claim about every UK ecommerce site in existence.

Sites were selected to represent a range of UK ecommerce businesses, scanned on their live public homepage and, where accessible for testing, a small number of additional pages. Each scan combined an automated pass with elements of manual review, checking for the categories of issue described below.

Two sites originally included in the data set were excluded from the final figures: one had a homepage gated entirely behind a modal window that prevented a meaningful scan of the underlying page, and one was a thin landing page with minimal content that would not have reflected a typical shopping experience. Both were judged unrepresentative of what this study set out to measure, so they were removed rather than included and left to skew the averages.

What the findings mean

97.4% had at least one Critical or Serious issue

This is the headline figure because it's the clearest single indicator of where UK ecommerce stands today. A Critical or Serious issue, in this context, is one that stops or significantly hinders a disabled customer from completing part of the shopping journey, such as an image with no alt text conveying essential product information, or an interactive element that cannot be reached or operated using a keyboard. Finding at least one of these on 112 of 115 sites suggests this pattern is common across the sector, not confined to a small number of outlier sites.

54.8% had at least one Critical issue specifically

Narrowing the picture further, just over half of all sites tested had at least one issue at the highest severity level. A Critical issue is one where a customer cannot complete a core action at all, such as a payment option that cannot be selected by keyboard, rather than one where the experience is more difficult but still ultimately possible. For a customer relying on assistive technology, a Critical issue on a checkout page can mean the difference between completing a purchase and being unable to buy at all.

Sites averaged 5.79 distinct issue types

This figure speaks to how spread out accessibility gaps tend to be, rather than concentrated in one part of a site. An average of nearly six distinct issue types per site means most sites in this sample weren't dealing with a single, isolated gap that a quick fix would resolve, but a scattering of different issues across different parts of the page, each needing its own attention.

90.4% had a landmark region structural issue

A landmark region is a way of marking up a page so that a screen reader user can jump directly to its main sections, such as navigation, main content, or the footer, rather than having to listen through the entire page from the top every time. When this structure is missing or incorrect, a screen reader user loses that shortcut, and has to navigate through more of the page manually to find what they're looking for. At 90.4%, this was the single most common issue type in the study, present on nearly all sites tested.

73.9% had a colour contrast issue

Colour contrast refers to how easily text can be read against its background. When contrast is too low, text becomes harder to read for anyone with low vision, colour vision differences, or simply for anyone viewing a screen in bright light. Just under three quarters of sites tested had at least one instance of text that did not meet the contrast levels needed for comfortable reading.

72.2% had missing or unclear link text

This refers to links where the text describing them, such as "click here" or "read more" with no further context, doesn't convey where the link actually goes when read on its own, which is how a screen reader user often encounters it. A customer using a screen reader who reaches a link labelled only "click here" has no way of knowing what it leads to without additional exploration, adding friction to a task that a sighted customer completes by simply looking at the surrounding context.

Why this matters for UK ecommerce specifically

The European Accessibility Act has applied since 28 June 2025 to UK businesses selling to EU consumers, and the UK's own Equality Act 2010 has applied to service providers, including websites, since 2010, with no exemption based on business size. Both point, in practice, toward the same broad standard that this study measured against.

What this data suggests is that a large majority of UK ecommerce sites currently have at least some distance to close against that standard, and that the specific issues involved, landmark structure, colour contrast, and link text among them, tend to recur across many different sites rather than being unique to any one business or sector. If your own site hasn't been tested, this data is a reasonable indication that checking is worthwhile regardless of how the site looks on the surface, since none of these issue types are necessarily visible without specifically testing for them.

How to cite this data

Journalists, researchers, and other sites are welcome to cite this data. For attribution, we'd suggest wording along these lines:

"According to a 2026 study of 115 UK ecommerce sites by Accessimo, 97.4% had at least one Critical or Serious accessibility issue, averaging 38.4 instances per site. Source: Accessimo, 'State of UK Ecommerce Accessibility 2026,' accessimo.co.uk."

Please link back to this page when citing any of the figures above, so readers can review the full methodology.

Check where your own site stands

For a fuller picture, including the kind of manual keyboard and screen reader testing behind this study, our manual audits are available in three tiers depending on how much of your site you want tested.

Book a manual audit