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WCAG 2.1 AA compliance checklist for EU online stores

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WCAG 2.1 Level AA is the technical standard the European Accessibility Act requires. If your store sells to customers anywhere in the EU, you need to meet it. This checklist covers every area the standard addresses, organised by the four POUR principles.

What the POUR framework means in practice

WCAG 2.1 groups all of its requirements under four principles:

  • Perceivable — every piece of content must reach users through at least one sense, even if they cannot see or hear
  • Operable — every interaction must work without a mouse
  • Understandable — content and page behaviour must be predictable
  • Robust — the code must work with assistive technologies available today and those built in the future

Level AA sits in the middle of three tiers (A, AA, AAA) and is what the EAA explicitly targets. Level A covers the bare minimum; Level AAA adds requirements that are impractical for most commercial sites.

Perceivable

Images and media

  • Every meaningful image has alt text that describes what it shows and why it is on the page.
  • Decorative images have an empty alt="" attribute so screen readers skip them entirely. Leaving alt out completely is a WCAG failure; an empty string is the correct signal.
  • Videos have captions that match the audio. Auto-generated captions do not meet this requirement unless reviewed and corrected.
  • Audio-only content has a text transcript.

Colour contrast

  • Normal body text (under 18pt regular or 14pt bold) must meet a 4.5:1 contrast ratio against its background.
  • Large text (18pt regular or 14pt bold and above) must meet 3:1.
  • No information is communicated by colour alone. A red error border needs an icon or text label as well.

Layout and zoom

  • Pages do not lose content or produce overlapping text when a user scales text to 200%.
  • No horizontal scrolling is required at a browser width of 1280px.

Operable

Keyboard access

  • Every link, button, form input, and interactive element is reachable by pressing Tab.
  • There are no keyboard traps: if a user can navigate into a component, they can navigate out without refreshing the page.
  • A "Skip to main content" link appears as the first focusable element on every page.
  • The keyboard focus indicator is visible at all times. Removing it in CSS is a WCAG failure.

Navigation and timing

  • Page titles describe the current page, not just the site name.
  • Links describe their destination. "Read more" and "click here" fail this criterion when they appear without surrounding context.
  • Time limits have a way to extend, pause, or turn them off.
  • Carousels and auto-playing content have pause controls.

Understandable

Language and errors

  • The <html> element carries a lang attribute that matches the page language (for example, lang="en" or lang="pl"). Search engines and screen readers both depend on this.
  • Form fields have labels. A placeholder attribute is not a label — it disappears as soon as someone starts typing.
  • Error messages tell users what went wrong and how to fix it. "Invalid input" fails; "Email address must include @" passes.

Predictable behaviour

  • Pages do not change context automatically when a user selects an option from a dropdown or checks a box, unless the user has been told to expect it.
  • Navigation remains in the same location across all pages.

Robust

Code quality

  • HTML elements have correct opening and closing tags.
  • No page contains duplicate id values.
  • Custom components — modals, tabs, accordions, date pickers — expose their role, name, and state through ARIA attributes so assistive technologies can interpret them.

Where e-commerce stores most often fail

Image alt text causes more WCAG complaints than any other criterion, according to accessibility audits across EU e-commerce sites. The reason is operational: developers rarely forget alt text in templates, but product images are uploaded daily by people who are not developers. A store with a 500-product catalogue can accumulate thousands of missing descriptions through normal trading.

Keyboard navigation is the second most common gap. Many commercial themes are built and tested only with a mouse. Components like mega-menus, image galleries, and custom dropdowns often trap keyboard users or skip focus indicators.

Colour contrast failures concentrate in text overlaid on product photography, where the background varies.

How to audit your site

Run a free WCAG scan on your storefront. The scan checks your page against WCAG 2.1 AA rules and returns a score with specific issue locations. Alt text, contrast, missing labels, and language settings all show in the results.

Keep one thing in mind: automated scanning catches between 30 and 40 percent of WCAG issues. The rest requires manual testing, particularly keyboard-only navigation and screen reader verification. For the EAA Annex V accessibility statement, you must document both what meets the standard and what does not, along with a remediation timeline for gaps.

Fixing image alt text at scale

Writing alt text by hand is realistic for a catalogue of 50 products. At 500 or more it becomes an operational problem, because new products arrive faster than the backlog clears.

Altvisor generates WCAG 2.1 AA-compliant alt text in all 24 official EU languages. You run your product images through the tool, review the output, and publish when you are satisfied. The alt text goes directly into your CMS without manual copy-paste.

Start a free account to see how many images on your store are currently missing compliant alt text, and run a WCAG scan for a full picture of where you stand today.