Digital accessibility: challenges and solutions for e-commerce.

Today, all eyes are on artificial intelligence—its promises and rapid advancements. Meanwhile, digital accessibility remains on the sidelines. Often seen as a “less marketable” topic, it fills fewer conference rooms than AI and is frequently perceived as a technical constraint rather than a growth lever.
Yet, a major shift is happening behind the scenes. New legal obligations, particularly the European Accessibility Act (EAA), have reshuffled the deck. This regulation is radically transforming business responsibilities, especially in e-commerce. Accessibility is no longer just a best practice—it’s now a legal requirement with enforceable penalties.
A Massive, Overlooked Market
When we talk about digital accessibility, we’re referring to over one billion people worldwide living with a disability—about 15% of the global population. In France alone, nearly 12 million people experience some form of disability, whether permanent, temporary, or situational. This represents a significant market that most e-commerce businesses still largely ignore, often due to lack of awareness rather than deliberate exclusion.
Disability isn’t just about visible conditions. It encompasses a diverse range of situations that can affect any internet user at some point in their life. Someone with a broken arm temporarily faces motor impairments when navigating a website. A user in a noisy environment experiences temporary hearing difficulties. An aging individual may gradually develop visual or cognitive challenges. Far from being niche, these scenarios affect a substantial portion of traffic on any e-commerce site.
To design a truly accessible website, we must understand the four major categories of disabilities and their impacts:
- Visual: This isn’t limited to total blindness, which requires screen readers to vocalize content. It also includes low vision, where users need to zoom up to 400%, and color perception disorders like color blindness, which make color-dependent information ineffective.
- Hearing: While subtitles for videos are a good start, they’re insufficient. For many deaf individuals, French Sign Language (LSF) is their natural language. Written French may be a secondary, complex language, making it difficult to understand forms, terms of sale, or checkout processes.
- Motor: Motor difficulties vary widely, from mild tremors that make mouse use imprecise to complete inability to use a keyboard or mouse. These users rely on assistive technologies like voice control or sip-and-puff switches for navigation.
- Cognitive/Mental: This category includes disorders like dyslexia or dyspraxia. A striking example is dyscalculia, a numerical learning disability. Someone with dyscalculia might be completely blocked by a simple CAPTCHA asking to solve “10 + 2.”
It’s the Law—and Your E-Commerce Site Is Probably Affected
“This doesn’t apply to us.” How many businesses still hide behind this illusion? A costly mistake. Since June 2025, the European EAA (European Accessibility Act) has expanded its obligations far beyond public sector entities or CAC 40 giants. E-commerce is on the front line. If you sell online, you’re directly impacted, and non-compliance penalties can be severe.
Contrary to popular belief, micro-businesses aren’t all exempt. The thresholds triggering obligations are 10+ employees (even with modest revenue) OR annual turnover ≥ €2 million (even with just 5 employees)
For example: If your SME has 11 employees but €1.5M in revenue, you’re affected. If you’re a team of 5 but generate €2.5M in sales, you’re also affected.
In short, most French e-commerce businesses fall under these rules. And ignorance of the law is no excuse—the DGCCRF (France’s Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs, and Fraud Control) can hold you accountable at any time.
In simple terms, you have two obligations :
Achieve 100% compliance with European technical standards over time—a daunting challenge when most audited sites today have catastrophically low accessibility levels.
Provide users with a compliance statement to the DGCCRF. Without this, you risk fines, forced compliance, and other sanctions.
Non-compliant e-commerce sites face serious penalties. In France, the DGCCRF conducts audits, and violations can lead to:
- Administrative fines of up to €20,000 for companies (and €1,500 for executives), scaled to the severity of the offense and business size.
- Forced compliance under strict deadlines, with heightened scrutiny.
- Legal action from disability rights associations, potentially resulting in damages for proven discrimination.
- Brand reputation damage, risking boycotts or negative press, especially if violations are publicized.
Worse, inaction costs more than action. Emergency compliance (audits, technical overhauls, penalties) is far more expensive than a gradual, proactive approach. And every day of non-compliance means excluding potential customers—nearly 12 million French people with disabilities, representing 20% of your audience.
Accessibility Pitfalls: When Good Intentions Create Exclusions
Take carousels, for example. Ubiquitous on e-commerce homepages, they perfectly illustrate how an seemingly harmless feature can become a major barrier for many users.
In terms of navigation, they often trap keyboard users. Slide controls are frequently inaccessible, preventing interaction. Screen reader users get lost in disorganized content flows, with no clear structure to guide them.
Auto-playing animations also pose a major issue. Continuous scrolling without a pause button can distract users with ADHD, making site navigation extremely difficult. Worse, these movements can trigger seizures in people with photosensitive epilepsy.
However, accessibility requires a balanced approach, as improvements for one disability can create new barriers for others. Consider phone storage selection buttons (“256 GB,” “512 GB”):
A developer might enhance the button with a more descriptive accessible name (“Rose iPhone 256 GB”) to help screen reader users. Yet, this well-intentioned fix breaks the experience for voice control users. Seeing “256 GB” on screen, they’ll naturally say, “Click 256 GB”—but the system won’t find this exact match in the code (“Rose iPhone 256 GB”). The golden rule to avoid such conflicts: The visible text must always be included in the accessible name. This ensures all assistive technologies (screen readers, voice commands, keyboard navigation) can interact correctly with the element.
Additionally, faced with accessibility’s complexity, many plugins promise to make a site compliant “with one click.” These tools, often presented as icons for adjusting contrast or text size, create the illusion of a simple fix.
But their effectiveness is severely limited. They only address visual overlays, failing to resolve structural code issues. Worse, they completely ignore the needs of screen reader or voice control users, as they don’t fix keyboard navigation problems.
A tool can’t fix a poorly designed site. True accessibility requires rethinking every aspect of the site:
- A clear structure with hierarchical headings (h1 > h2 > h3), skip links, and rigorous HTML semantics helps all users navigate intuitively. The goal is immediate comprehension without linear scanning.
- Every visual element needs an alternative text that conveys essential commercial information. A simple “red shoe” becomes “Nike Air Zoom Pegasus 40, Intense Red with white Swoosh logo details, React foam midsole for optimal cushioning, ideal for road running.” This allows users to make informed purchase decisions.
- Every step must be fully keyboard-navigable, with clear error messages (“Error: Postal code must be 5 digits. Field: 7500”) and explicit confirmations (“Step 2/4: Payment – Total: €129.99”). No user should feel blocked by decorative elements or poorly designed forms.
While accessibility may seem complex, it’s also a tremendous opportunity. By redesigning your site to be inclusive, you:
- Comply with regulations
- Avoid fines and legal risks
- Open your market to millions of currently excluded users
- Improve the experience for all visitors
- Strengthen your brand’s inclusive image
Your responsibility extends to customer-generated content accessibility
Another major—and often overlooked—consequence of the new European standard is that: “All published content must be accessible.” This doesn’t just apply to content you create, but also to user-generated content on your platform.
If your site allows customers to post reviews with photos or videos, you become responsible for making that content accessible. Practically, you must provide users with the necessary tools to make their own content accessible.
For example, if a customer posts a photo of their new coffee machine with the comment, “It looks amazing in my kitchen, the purple color is gorgeous,” your comment interface must let them specify whether the image is purely decorative or informative—and if informative, prompt them to write an alternative text description (the famous “alt text”).
This is a major shift. Every new feature allowing users to create and publish content (reviews, forums, etc.) must be designed from the start with this requirement in mind.
Digital accessibility must be integrated from the very start of a project, because retrofitting an existing site is a complex, costly endeavor. This reactive approach leads to messy situations—developers scrambling to fix disastrous audit results, while designers protest, “But I made great choices! That carousel looked amazing—and now it’s non-compliant?”
The only sustainable solution is to train your teams—designers, developers, and project managers—so that best practices are applied at every stage of design and development.
Accessibility is no longer an afterthought or a checkbox. It’s a core pillar of web design, a legal requirement, and a strategic imperative. With regulations tightening, the question is no longer “Should we comply?” but “How do we comply effectively?”
Beyond legal risks, what’s the real cost of excluding millions of potential customers from your business?
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