Is Accessibility Becoming the Competitive Divide in the eCommerce Space?

eCommerce is undergoing its most dramatic shift to date, but the biggest change isn’t a new device, platform, or marketing trend. It’s accessibility.

A new research study from accessiBe, which surveyed more than 300 eCommerce leaders and members of the disability community, reveals findings that online retailers need to sit up and pay attention to. 

Litigation is rising, regulations are expanding, AI-powered discovery is becoming the new storefront, and voice commerce is fully mainstream. 

None of these developments is optional for brands anymore because they’re redefining how consumers find, engage with, and buy from online stores.

And in every one of these shifts, accessibility shows up as the deciding factor.

While many businesses still treat accessibility as a legal box to check, the data tells a very different story. Accessibility is now a competitive advantage, and the retailers who understand this and invest early, are positioning themselves for some serious growth. 

Accessibility isn’t just influencing the eCommerce landscape, either. It’s quietly becoming the divide between brands that will win the next era of digital commerce and those that will be left behind.

Key Findings From the accessiBe eCommerce Study

This study from accessiBe offers one of the clearest snapshots of what’s shaping the digital retail landscape in 2025, and there are a number of significant findings worth noting.

 Litigation and Regulation Are Escalating Faster Than Expected

The report reveals a projected 5,000 accessibility lawsuits in 2025, which is a 20% year-over-year jump. What’s more, 69% are targeting eCommerce brands. 

Even more striking is that 43% of respondents reported already facing an accessibility lawsuit or claim.

For retailers, this means the era of “we’ll deal with accessibility later” is effectively over. Regulators are increasingly using WCAG 2.1 AA as the benchmark standard, and businesses that fail to treat it as their baseline are exposing themselves to financial and reputational risk.

Cart Abandonment Is Largely an Accessibility Problem

While cart abandonment is a familiar challenge, this study reframes it a little differently. $260 billion in sales are lost annually due to checkout friction, and much of this stems directly from accessibility barriers.

Nearly one in four eCommerce leaders admitted that assistive technologies do not work properly on their checkout pages, and only 40% had conducted an accessibility audit within the last year. 

This disconnect highlights a major blind spot in the industry. Brands are optimizing their checkouts for speed and aesthetics, but not for usability or inclusivity.

Voice Commerce Has Evolved From Assistive Tech to Mainstream Behavior

What began as an accessibility tool is now a consumer habit. accessiBe’s study cites that nearly 50% of U.S. consumers shop using voice commands, and voice-enabled purchases are projected to reach $81.8 billion in 2025.

Among retailers who have already implemented voice commerce capabilities, 58% say more than a quarter of their orders now begin with voice interactions. 

This trajectory demonstrates a broader truth we see across the accessibility landscape, which is that features designed to support disabled users often evolve into massive mainstream conveniences.

AI Chat Search Is Becoming the New Storefront

The rapid adoption of AI assistants is reshaping how people discover new products. According to the study, around 1 billion prompts are issued daily to AI chat tools, and AI platforms now drive more than 1.3 billion referrals to websites each month.

Accessibility plays a decisive role here. Products with accessible markup, alt text, and structured data are far more likely to show up in conversational recommendations, and brands that ignore accessibility risk invisibility.

Global Regulations Are Converging Into a Single Reality

With the European Accessibility Act (EAA) now enforceable, the stakes for global retailers have risen sharply. 

accessiBe’s study shows that 71% of surveyed companies sell into the EU, but 85% admit they are not prepared for EAA compliance. The potential penalties, including fines up to €500,000 per violation, confirm how costly non-compliance can be.

The U.K. is also increasing enforcement under the Equality Act and the Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations, making accessibility a non-negotiable prerequisite for international growth.

Hyper-Personalization Only Works When It’s Accessible

Consumers expect personalization, but many brands are still struggling to deliver it inclusively.

20% of eCommerce leaders admit they don’t know how to personalize experiences for customers with disabilities, which reveals a major gap between marketing innovation and accessible execution.

True personalization adapts to both what users see and how they access content. 

The Accessibility Gap: The Silent Divide Between eCommerce Leaders and Everyone Else

When viewed together, the trends outlined in the accessiBe study point to a single conclusion: accessibility is no longer a secondary consideration in eCommerce. It’s now the backbone of digital commerce and a prerequisite for participating in the global marketplace.

Yet despite this clarity, much of the industry still misunderstands what accessibility actually requires.

Tools Are Only One Piece of the Puzzle

At AccessibilityChecker.org, we continue to see a recurring challenge: many organizations assume that accessibility begins and ends with a single tool or update. 

In reality, plugins, automated scans, and AI-driven solutions are powerful components of an accessibility program, but they work best when they’re part of a broader, ongoing strategy.

Automated tools can surface issues at scale, accelerate remediation, and keep sites aligned with evolving standards, but they cannot replace thoughtful implementation, inclusive design choices, or real-world testing with people who rely on assistive technologies every day.

This is where many brands unintentionally overestimate their readiness. 

Experiencing the Web From Every Angle

Without validating key user journeys, especially checkout flows, product discovery, and mobile interactions, it’s easy to miss barriers that only become visible when experienced through the lens of disability. 

And as AI-driven commerce and conversational search reset the rules for visibility, the stakes become even higher. Algorithms depend on clean semantics, structured markup, and accessible content to understand and recommend products, and sites that lack this foundation risk losing discoverability long before they face regulatory scrutiny.

With global compliance requirements tightening, accessibility also needs clear ownership. 

It can no longer fall solely on a developer, a single product owner, or a quarterly audit. Instead, it should be treated with the same strategic importance as security, SEO, and conversion optimization.

In the end, eCommerce brands that treat accessibility as a strategic, organization-wide practice will be the ones best positioned to grow, compete, and stay visible in the future of digital commerce, and the data is proof of this.