Accessibility Watch › Data Study
Watch Retailers 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 watch retailers online to see how the group measures up.
How many watch retailers online pass accessibility checks?
86% failed the automated checks (grade C, D, or F). Of 7 sites scanned: 1 scored an A, 3 graded C, 3 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 6.1 types of barrier.
The most common accessibility failures
| Barrier | Share of sites |
|---|---|
| Some links have no readable text — usually icon-only links. | 57% |
| A button’s visible text doesn’t match the description it announces to screen readers. | 43% |
| An interactive element (link, button) is inside another interactive element. | 43% |
| Some content on the page isn’t inside a recognized region (header, nav, main, footer, aside). | 43% |
| This page is missing a main heading (H1). | 43% |
| Some text on this page is too light to read against its background. | 43% |
| Some buttons or links are too small to tap reliably on touch screens. | 43% |
| Heading levels skip — for example, an H2 jumps directly to an H4 with no H3 between them. | 29% |
| Ensure | 29% |
| A custom input control (search box, range slider, custom date picker) has no name. | 14% |
The most accessible watch retailers online
These scored an A — clean on the high-frequency barriers we grade:
- bobswatches.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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