Accessibility Watch › Data Study
Swimwear Brands Accessibility: We Tested 4 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 4 swimwear brands to see how the group measures up.
How many swimwear brands pass accessibility checks?
50% failed the automated checks (grade C, D, or F). Of 4 sites scanned: 2 scored an A, 2 graded C, 0 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 5.5 types of barrier.
The most common accessibility failures
| Barrier | Share of sites |
|---|---|
| Some content on the page isn’t inside a recognized region (header, nav, main, footer, aside). | 100% |
| A heading on this page has no text. | 50% |
| Ensure landmarks are unique | 50% |
| Ensure elements with an ARIA role that require child roles contain them | 50% |
| A button’s visible text doesn’t match the description it announces to screen readers. | 50% |
| Ensure that lists are structured correctly | 50% |
| Ensure role attribute has an appropriate value for the element | 25% |
| Some text on this page is too light to read against its background. | 25% |
| Heading levels skip — for example, an H2 jumps directly to an H4 with no H3 between them. | 25% |
| Some links have no readable text — usually icon-only links. | 25% |
The most accessible swimwear brands
These scored an A — clean on the high-frequency barriers we grade:
- summersalt.com
- frankiesbikinis.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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