In cooperation with Institute for digital accessibility A11y.si (opens in new window, in Slovenian) we tested accessibility of 20 Slovenian e-commerce websites manually for the second Slovenian Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD). It was a lot of work and we produced a lot of data and I decided it was worth converting it to a short academic article.
Hopefully it can serve as a reference for other articles as manual auditing results are not very available. Another strong motivator was – as article title implies – to check (in)accessibility of e-commerce in Slovenia a year before European Accessibility Act (end of June 2025).
Briefly about the conference
Digital Inclusion in the Information Society (DIGIN, opens in new window) focused on advancing digital inclusion in the Information Society, ensuring accessibility for everyone, including people with disabilities. The hybrid event, co-organized with AccessibleEU (opens in new window), explored solutions and insights gained from the COVID-19 pandemic on assistive technologies. It targeted the inclusion of individuals with physical, visual, auditory, cognitive, and age-related disabilities.
Held under (I am sorry for poor accessibility of their website) Information Society 2024 multi-conference (opens in new window), the event took place physically at Jožef Stefan Institute, Ljubljana, Slovenia but I was attending online. Organizers include the Jožef Stefan Institute, University of Maribor, and AccessibleEU.
(In)Accessibility of Slovenian E-commerce the Year Before the European Accessibility Act – article
I need to say that I am by all means not a professional academic writer, and I hope points made in the article are understandable.
Abstract
The European Accessibility Act (EAA, Directive (EU) 2019/882) aims to harmonize accessibility requirements, with a significant focus on e-commerce services due to their socio-economic impact.
This study manually assessed 26 key EN 301 549 requirements, aligned with WCAG 2.1 success criteria at levels A and AA, to provide more relevant results for future accessibility trend comparisons and to advocate for necessary awareness and education initiatives. We examined 20 major and original, Slovenian e-commerce platforms expected to fall within the EAA’s scope.
None of the websites were fully accessible; each failed at least 13 out of the 26 selected requirements, with an average of 17.1 criteria unmet per website. Our findings highlight the urgent need for improved accessibility to ensure digital inclusivity in Slovenia and identify specific accessibility and usability issues that must be addressed to achieve compliance and bridge existing digital barriers.
Read the full article
I don’t like PDF documents, but they are often required and it was also the case here. I made my best to make it accessible, but I will provide HTML version soon. Please reach out if you want alternative format sooner, happy to send it to you.
I am now converting the PDF to HTML and will update this post in a couple of days.
