EAA Annex / EN 301 549
No accessibility statement was detected
What this failure is
An accessibility statement is a short page on your site where you explain what accessibility standards you aim to meet, which parts of your site are known to fall short, and how a user with a disability can contact you if they hit a barrier. The European Accessibility Act expects the services it covers to publish one, and the Web Accessibility Directive (2016/2102) has required it of public-sector sites since 2018 using a common format. Even if your business is not clearly in scope, publishing a plain-English statement is one of the highest-signal, lowest-effort things you can do — it tells users that accessibility is on your radar and gives them a route to raise problems before they escalate.
Reference: EAA Annex / EN 301 549 — the authoritative spec.
Who it affects
- Screen reader users: Without a statement there is no known route to report a bug; users hit a barrier and simply leave, taking the sale with them.
- Users with disabilities looking for accessible retailers: Advocacy groups and personal recommendations increasingly filter on whether a site publishes a statement; missing one costs you these customers.
- Regulators and enforcement bodies: Under the WAD and the EAA, the statement is one of the first things an enforcement authority looks for when handling a complaint.
- Business partners and procurement: B2B buyers in the public sector often require a statement as part of their supplier vetting.
How to fix it
Concrete steps for the four platforms most small e-commerce sites run on. If you use a different stack, the underlying HTML change is the same.
Shopify
Create a new page: Online Store > Pages > Add page. Title it Accessibility Statement and write a short statement covering (a) what standard you aim to meet, such as WCAG 2.1 Level AA, (b) any known limitations, and (c) a contact email for reports. Save the page, then add it to your footer menu: Online Store > Navigation > Footer menu > Add menu item, link to the accessibility page. The URL needs to be discoverable — a link buried three clicks deep does not satisfy the intent of the rule.
WooCommerce
Create a new WordPress page: Pages > Add New. Title it Accessibility Statement. Write the statement — the W3C provides a free generator at https://www.w3.org/WAI/planning/statements/generator/ which produces a good starting draft. Publish, then add the page to your footer menu at Appearance > Menus (or in the block-editor footer template). Some accessibility plugins claim to generate a statement automatically; treat those as a starting point, edit for your actual site, and never claim conformance you cannot back up.
Wix
In the Wix dashboard, go to Pages, click + Add Page, and add a blank page titled Accessibility Statement. Draft the statement in the page editor. Add the page to your footer via Menus & Pages. Wix's Accessibility Wizard (Settings > Accessibility Wizard) has a template you can start from — review it carefully and edit to reflect your actual site's status; do not publish the template unedited.
Squarespace
Go to Pages, click the + button under Not Linked (so the page does not appear in the top nav), and add a new page called Accessibility Statement. Write the statement in a text block. Then link to it from your footer: edit the footer, add a text link, and paste the page URL. Squarespace has no built-in generator, so use the W3C generator (https://www.w3.org/WAI/planning/statements/generator/) as a starting draft.
Notes
This scanner looks for common phrases in fourteen European languages ("accessibility statement", "Erklärung zur Barrierefreiheit", "déclaration d'accessibilité" and so on). If your statement uses different wording — "Accessibility policy", "Access information" — the check may miss it even though a statement exists. That is a false-positive: your statement is fine, the scanner is being conservative.
Check your own site
Our accessibility statement scan is free and reports findings only — we do not certify sites.