Accessibility for online shops: what to check and fix

Why online shops are covered

Selling to consumers online is an e-commerce service. Since 28 June 2025, the European Accessibility Act applies to exactly that, in Germany through the BFSG. Only microenterprises with fewer than ten employees and no more than €2 million in annual turnover or balance sheet total are exempt.

There is also a simpler reason: every barrier in your shop is a customer who cannot buy.

Where shops typically have barriers

We find the same errors in shop after shop:

• Product images without a text alternative. A screen reader only says "image" or a file name.
• Text that is too pale. Old prices, delivery notes and placeholders in forms often have too little contrast.
• Form fields without a label. A placeholder like "Email address" disappears while typing and does not replace a label.
• Icons without a name. Basket, search and social media links are often just an icon that a screen reader announces as "link" or "button" with no meaning.
• No visible focus. People who navigate with the keyboard cannot see where they are.
• Click targets that are too small. Plus and minus buttons for the quantity are hard to hit on a phone.

Most errors sit in the theme

Whether Shopify, Shopware or WooCommerce: an error in the product tile, the navigation or the footer appears on every page that uses that template. One error quickly becomes hundreds of places.

That is why Luentis groups findings by template. You do not see 46 separate images without alt text, but one error in the product tile that appears on 9 pages, with the code to fix it there.

What the scan does not cover

To be honest: an automatic scan does not see everything.

• We do not check pages behind a login, such as the customer account and the last steps of the checkout.
• Payment pages from third parties are not in your hands, and not in our scan.
• Whether an alt text makes sense, or whether checkout works with the keyboard, takes a person to judge. Our guided check helps you with that.

How to go about it

1. Check your homepage for free. You see the score and the most important errors in under a minute.
2. With the single audit, we check up to 250 pages on desktop and mobile and show every error with a fix in code.
3. Give the report to your agency or developers. The fixes belong in the theme.
4. Answer the guided check and publish your accessibility statement.

Our sample report for an invented furniture shop shows what such a report looks like.