Accessibility Watch › Data Study
Lighting Stores Online Accessibility: We Tested 7 Sites Against WCAG 2.1 AA
Web accessibility is a legal requirement — under the ADA in the U.S. and the European Accessibility Act in the EU. We ran an automated WCAG 2.1 Level AA scan on 7 lighting stores online to see how the group measures up.
How many lighting stores online pass accessibility checks?
57% failed the automated checks (grade C, D, or F). Of 7 sites scanned: 3 scored an A, 2 graded C, 2 graded D, and 0 graded F.
Grades reflect the high-frequency barriers automated scanners most often flag — so an A means a site is clean on those, not that it has zero issues of any kind. Across the full set of WCAG 2.1 AA checks, sites averaged 3.7 types of barrier.
The most common accessibility failures
| Barrier | Share of sites |
|---|---|
| This page has no ‘main content’ region marked. | 71% |
| Some content on the page isn’t inside a recognized region (header, nav, main, footer, aside). | 71% |
| The page doesn’t declare what language it’s in. | 29% |
| Some links have no readable text — usually icon-only links. | 29% |
| Some buttons or links are too small to tap reliably on touch screens. | 29% |
| This page is missing a main heading (H1). | 29% |
| Ensure aria-hidden elements are not focusable nor contain focusable elements | 14% |
| Ensure all ARIA attributes have valid values | 14% |
| An interactive element (link, button) is inside another interactive element. | 14% |
| Ensure elements that have scrollable content are accessible by keyboard in Safari | 14% |
The most accessible lighting stores online
These scored an A — clean on the high-frequency barriers we grade:
- lumens.com
- shadesoflight.com
- lightopia.com
Methodology
We scanned each site with axe-core 4.11.4 against WCAG 2.1 Level AA, in its default state, and reported automatically-detectable failures. Automated testing catches a portion of accessibility barriers; full conformance also requires manual and assistive-technology testing. See our methodology for details.
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