We scanned 32 European SMB webshops. 75% would fail a WCAG audit.
Original data · July 2026 · 24 independent e-commerce shops + 8 web agencies across Spain, the Netherlands and France — one year after the European Accessibility Act became enforceable.
Grade distribution
Left to right: A (2) · B (3) · C (3) · D (10) · F (14). Grades are severity-weighted 0–100 scores from axe-core results (methodology).
Country averages were almost identical
| Market | Average score (shops + agencies) |
|---|---|
| 🇪🇸 Spain | 60/100 |
| 🇳🇱 Netherlands | 62/100 |
| 🇫🇷 France | 60/100 |
No market is meaningfully ahead: the problem is structural, not national.
The 10 most common failures
| WCAG issue | Sites affected (of 32) |
|---|---|
| Insufficient colour contrast | 24 · 75% |
| Links without an accessible name | 19 · 59% |
| Images missing alt text | 9 · 28% |
| Zoom disabled (meta viewport) | 7 · 22% |
| Touch targets too small | 7 · 22% |
| Buttons without an accessible name | 6 · 19% |
| Invalid ARIA attributes | 3 · 9% |
| ARIA attributes where prohibited | 3 · 9% |
| Scrollable regions unreachable by keyboard | 3 · 9% |
| Iframes without titles | 2 · 6% |
Every one of these is fixable by a working developer in hours, not weeks — the linked guides explain each fix in plain English. Missing alt text and unnamed links/buttons are also the failures most frequently cited in accessibility complaints and lawsuits.
The uncomfortable gap
The most interesting number isn't the failure rate — it's the 26-point gap between agencies (80) and the shops they serve (54). Agencies broadly know how to build accessible sites; that knowledge simply isn't reaching small-business clients as a standard deliverable. Since June 2025 the European Accessibility Act makes accessibility a legal requirement for e-commerce serving EU consumers — the gap is now a liability gap.
Methodology & honesty notes
- 32 sites: 24 independent SMB webshops + 8 small web agencies (ES/NL/FR), selected in early July 2026 while researching typical small-business sites — not cherry-picked for badness.
- Automated homepage scan per site (axe-core, WCAG 2.1/2.2 A + AA), severity-weighted 0–100 score. Automated testing can only detect a subset of WCAG issues — so these numbers are a lower bound. See what automated scans can and can't prove.
- Sites are anonymized. We are privately sharing each site's full report with its owner, free, with fix guidance — the goal is repair, not shaming.
- Consistent with the WebAIM Million, which found detectable WCAG failures on 95.9% of the top million homepages. Our stricter grade threshold (D/F) still catches 75% of this sample.
Where does your site stand?
Free scan, 30 seconds, no signup — the same test we used here.
Press or researchers: we're happy to share the aggregate dataset or run larger samples — support@pilotmain.com. General information, not legal advice.