We scanned 45 of the UK's biggest retailers for accessibility. 3 in 4 fail.
July 2026 · AllyRadar research · 2 July 2026
One year after the European Accessibility Act came into force — and with UK retailers already answerable to the Equality Act 2010 — we ran the homepages of 50 of the UK's best-known retailers through the same automated WCAG 2.1 AA checks used in professional accessibility audits. 45 sites completed the scan. 34 of them — 76% — have at least one critical or serious accessibility failure on their homepage alone.
What's actually broken
The most common failures are not exotic edge cases — they're basics:
| Failure | Sites | Who it hurts |
|---|---|---|
| Page language not declared (<html lang>) | 13 of 45 | Screen readers guess the language — and mispronounce everything when they guess wrong |
| Insufficient colour contrast | 13 of 45 | Low-vision users, and anyone on a phone in sunlight |
| Links with no discernible text | 9 of 45 | Screen reader users hear “link… link… link” with no idea where any of them go |
| Zooming/scaling disabled | 5 of 45 | Low-vision users who need to pinch-zoom simply can’t |
| Images missing alt text | 6 of 45 | Screen reader users get filenames or silence instead of content |
None of these is expensive to fix. A missing lang attribute is one word of HTML. That 13 of the UK's biggest retail sites haven't added it says something about how little accessibility is monitored — not how hard it is.
The full league table
| # | Retailer | Score | Critical | Serious | Most impactful issue |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Decathlon UK | 100 | — | — | No automated violations found |
| 2 | IKEA UK | 100 | — | — | No automated violations found |
| 3 | Marks & Spencer | 100 | — | — | No automated violations found |
| 4 | Matalan | 100 | — | — | No automated violations found |
| 5 | Ocado | 100 | — | — | No automated violations found |
| 6 | Primark | 100 | — | — | No automated violations found |
| 7 | Selfridges | 100 | — | — | No automated violations found |
| 8 | TK Maxx | 100 | — | — | No automated violations found |
| 9 | Very | 100 | — | — | No automated violations found |
| 10 | Waterstones | 100 | — | — | No automated violations found |
| 11 | River Island | 97 | — | — | Zooming and scaling must not be disabled |
| 12 | ASOS | 92 | — | 1 | <html> element must have a lang attribute |
| 13 | Aldi | 92 | — | 1 | Links must have discernible text |
| 14 | Argos | 92 | — | 1 | <html> element must have a lang attribute |
| 15 | Go Outdoors | 92 | — | 1 | <ul> and <ol> must only directly contain <li>, <script> or <template> elements |
| 16 | H&M UK | 92 | — | 1 | <html> element must have a lang attribute |
| 17 | Halfords | 92 | — | 1 | Elements must meet minimum color contrast ratio thresholds |
| 18 | Holland & Barrett | 92 | — | 1 | <svg> elements with an img role must have alternative text |
| 19 | Iceland | 92 | — | 1 | <html> element must have a lang attribute |
| 20 | Lidl | 92 | — | 1 | Links must have discernible text |
| 21 | Sainsbury's | 92 | — | 1 | <html> element must have a lang attribute |
| 22 | Screwfix | 92 | — | 1 | <html> element must have a lang attribute |
| 23 | Superdrug | 92 | — | 1 | <html> element must have a lang attribute |
| 24 | Tesco | 92 | — | 1 | <html> element must have a lang attribute |
| 25 | Zara UK | 92 | — | 1 | <html> element must have a lang attribute |
| 26 | Waitrose | 85 | 1 | — | Images must have alternative text |
| 27 | B&Q | 82 | 1 | — | Delayed refresh under 20 hours must not be used |
| 28 | Morrisons | 78 | — | 1 | Elements must meet minimum color contrast ratio thresholds |
| 29 | Next | 78 | — | 3 | Elements must meet minimum color contrast ratio thresholds |
| 30 | Co-op | 72 | — | 4 | Elements must meet minimum color contrast ratio thresholds |
| 31 | Mountain Warehouse | 72 | — | 1 | Interactive controls must not be nested |
| 32 | Boots | 66 | 1 | 3 | Images must have alternative text |
| 33 | Smyths Toys | 51 | 1 | 4 | Images must have alternative text |
| 34 | Asda | 50 | — | 1 | Elements must only use permitted ARIA attributes |
| 35 | Wickes | 47 | 1 | 1 | Elements must meet minimum color contrast ratio thresholds |
| 36 | AO | 43 | 1 | 2 | Links must have discernible text |
| 37 | Boohoo | 43 | 3 | — | Certain ARIA roles must contain particular children |
| 38 | Uniqlo UK | 43 | — | 1 | Elements must meet minimum color contrast ratio thresholds |
| 39 | Dunelm | 37 | 1 | — | Buttons must have discernible text |
| 40 | The Range | 29 | — | 2 | Elements must meet minimum color contrast ratio thresholds |
| 41 | Homebase | 24 | — | 2 | Links must have discernible text |
| 42 | Pets at Home | 16 | 3 | 1 | Elements must meet minimum color contrast ratio thresholds |
| 43 | JD Sports | 15 | 1 | 3 | Links must have discernible text |
| 44 | Currys | 10 | 2 | 3 | Links must have discernible text |
| 45 | New Look | 6 | — | 7 | Elements must meet minimum color contrast ratio thresholds |
Download the full dataset (CSV) →
Why this matters now
The European Accessibility Act has applied to e-commerce since June 2025, and enforcement is accelerating: market surveillance authorities across the EU can audit without warning, and in June 2026 a French court ordered Carrefour to make its e-commerce site and app fully accessible. Penalties reach €250,000 in France and 5% of turnover in Italy. UK retailers selling into the EU are in scope regardless of Brexit — and domestically, inaccessible sites have been actionable under the Equality Act 2010 all along. Beyond the legal exposure: roughly 1 in 5 people in the UK has a disability, and the spending power of disabled households is estimated at £274 billion a year. Every failure in the table above is a checkout some customers cannot reach.
Methodology — and honest limits
- We scanned each retailer's homepage only, on 2 July 2026, using a real Chromium browser and axe-core — the open-source engine used in professional audits — against WCAG 2.1 A/AA. Scores are AllyRadar's severity-weighted 0–100 scale.
- 5 of the 50 sites (John Lewis, Sports Direct, Harrods, Game, WHSmith) blocked or failed automated scanning and are excluded — no score should be inferred either way.
- Update, 31 July 2026: Waitrose — originally excluded because their site blocked automated scanning — lifted the block and asked to be included. We re-scanned www.waitrose.com on 31 July 2026 with the identical methodology and added the result (85/100, one critical failure) to the table; headline figures now cover 45 sites.
- Automated testing catches a large share of WCAG failures but cannot verify every criterion — some require human judgment. A perfect automated score does not guarantee full accessibility or legal compliance; a failing score, however, is a failure by definition. Real-world accessibility is likely worse than these homepage-only numbers, not better.
- Fixed your issues? We'll happily re-scan and update this page — email research@allyradar.app.
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