WebAIM study flags Black Friday accessibility issues on sites
Shopping homepages registered an average of 71.0 detectable accessibility errors in WebAIM's February 2026 scan of 95,039 retail sites. That count stood 26.6 percent above the 56.1-error mean recorded across the full million-page sample. The evaluation focused on homepages drawn from the Tranco ranking and used the WAVE engine to identify barriers with a high likelihood of violating WCAG 2.2 Level A or AA standards. The timing of the findings coincides with retailer preparations for Black Friday, one of the year's heaviest online shopping periods.
WebAIM applied automated detection to rendered DOM content after scripts and styles executed. Shopping sites showed minimal year-over-year change, declining only from 71.2 errors in 2025 to 71.0 in 2026. By comparison, the overall web average rose 10.1 percent over the same interval. WCAG conformance failures appeared on 95.9 percent of all tested homepages, up from 94.8 percent in 2025. The percentages reflect the entire sample rather than shopping pages alone, and the methodology notes that automated tools cannot capture every possible barrier.
Category-level results placed shopping second among reported groups. Sports sites averaged 71.4 errors, or 27.3 percent above baseline, while shopping followed at 71.0 errors. Style and fashion pages recorded 66.7 errors. Government sites performed best among the listed categories with 42.4 errors, 24.4 percent below the overall mean. The following table presents the figures:
Website Category | Homepages Tested | Average Errors | Versus Overall
Sports | 15,640 | 71.4 | +27.3%
Shopping | 95,039 | 71.0 | +26.6%
Style and Fashion | 21,184 | 66.7 | +18.9%
All Homepages | 1,000,000 | 56.1 | Baseline
Government | 22,345 | 42.4 | −24.4%
Shopping therefore trailed only sports by 0.4 errors per homepage.
Adobe projects $12.9 billion in U.S. online Black Friday sales for 2026, representing 9.2 percent growth from the prior year. Thanksgiving online spending is forecast at $6.9 billion, up 8.5 percent, and Cyber Monday at $15.1 billion, up 6.2 percent. Mobile devices are expected to account for 63 percent of Thanksgiving Day spending. National Retail Federation October 2026 research found 56 percent of holiday shoppers cite sales and discounts as factors in choosing retailers, with Adobe anticipating peak discounts of 30 percent during Cyber Week.
AudioEye's 2026 retail audit separately identified non-text content failures on 78.9 percent of pages and missing form labels or instructions on 49.1 percent. The American Foundation for the Blind documented 79 distinct accessibility barriers across 291 online-shopping tasks completed by 20 blind or low-vision adults during the 2023 Thanksgiving period. W3C guidance on timing adjustable recommends that sites provide adjustable or extendable time limits for users with visual, motor, or cognitive disabilities, subject to defined exceptions.
Brian M. Mittman, Esq., Managing Partner of Markhoff & Mittman, P.C., offered this assessment: "There is a particular kind of frustration that comes with being excluded from something that everyone around you is participating in effortlessly, and I think about that when I look at web accessibility data during the holiday shopping season. A person who is blind has already navigated a world that was not designed with them in mind every single day. When they sit down to shop a Black Friday sale and encounter a homepage full of inaccessible elements, they are not experiencing a new problem. They are experiencing the same problem in a new place. Federal courts have recognized that Title III of the ADA may require retailers to provide equal digital access. The question these error rates raise is not whether the law applies. It is why, after decades of clear legal development, so many retailers are still choosing not to comply."
NRF data indicate 64 percent of consumers now expect to complete most holiday shopping during Thanksgiving weekend, compared with 51 percent five years earlier. Black Friday falls on November 27 and Cyber Monday on November 30, concentrating activity across product research, promotional offers, and checkout. The concentration raises the practical importance of whether people with disabilities can independently navigate those steps during the peak period.
WebAIM's analysis covered international homepages evaluated in February 2026 and did not examine Black Friday transactions or checkout completion rates. AudioEye and the American Foundation for the Blind employed separate methodologies. Adobe sales and discount figures are forecasts. Detected accessibility errors do not independently establish violations of the ADA.
