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Compliance6 min4 July 2026

Web accessibility is now mandatory: what the Carrefour ruling means for your website

In June 2026, a court ordered Carrefour to make its e-commerce site and its app accessible to people with disabilities, within six months and with a daily penalty for every day of delay. This is not a press release: it is a court ruling, the first of its kind in Europe. And the rule that got a retail giant sanctioned applies to your website too.

What has been mandatory since 28 June 2025

The European Accessibility Act (Directive (EU) 2019/882), transposed into French law, requires that digital services sold to European consumers be usable by everyone: e-commerce, online banking, transport booking, e-books. In concrete terms, a blind person must be able to buy on your site with their screen reader, and someone who cannot use a mouse must be able to do everything with a keyboard.

There is only one exemption: micro-enterprises, meaning fewer than 10 employees and less than 2 million euros in annual revenue. Cross either of those two thresholds and you are covered, whatever your size otherwise.

The Carrefour case, in three acts

  • July 2025: disability rights associations send formal notices to Auchan, Carrefour, E.Leclerc and Picard. Their sites fail the basic tests.
  • November 2025: the responses are deemed insufficient, and the first summary proceedings are filed with the commercial court.
  • June 2026: Carrefour is ordered to bring its site and its app into compliance within 6 months, under a daily penalty. The other cases are moving forward.

The message for SMBs is simple: the obligation is no longer theoretical. The associations have shown the way, and the complaints are not aimed only at the giants.

What "accessible" actually means

The RGAA (the French accessibility standard, aligned with the international WCAG standards) counts 106 criteria, but the essentials come down to a few families:

  • Keyboard: the entire journey (menu, product pages, cart, checkout) must work without a mouse.
  • Images: every image that carries information has a text alternative that a screen reader can read out.
  • Contrast: text stays readable for people with low vision (minimum contrast ratio).
  • Forms: every field has an explicit label, and errors are announced clearly.
  • Structure: a proper heading hierarchy, a declared language, consistent navigation: the landmarks screen readers rely on to find their way around.

Good news along the way: these criteria overlap heavily with what Google rewards in search rankings. An accessible site is almost always a better-indexed site.

What are you actually risking?

In France: fines of up to 7,500 € per violation (15,000 € for repeat offenses), an injunction with a daily penalty, and publication of the sanction. But the real cost lies elsewhere: an emergency compliance overhaul imposed by a court costs several times the price of a planned project, and the WHO reminds us that nearly one person in six lives with a disability. That is how many customers are giving up on buying from you today.

Where to start, this week

  1. The keyboard test (5 minutes): unplug your mouse and try to buy something on your own site. If you get stuck, your customers with disabilities get stuck too.
  2. An audit of your key pages: homepage, product page, cart, contact form. That is where everything is decided, and it is what we offer free of charge.
  3. A phased plan: fix whatever blocks the purchase first, then work through the rest of the standard, release after release.

At TROIE, accessibility is the second pillar of our compliance offer, alongside the AI Act: a free audit, a full RGAA assessment (1,500 to 3,000 €), remediation by our developers, and ongoing monitoring so every release stays compliant. The first step takes 30 minutes and costs nothing.