EAA compliance for BigCommerce: WCAG 2.1 AA checklist & fixes

What the EAA actually requires from a BigCommerce site

The European Accessibility Act (Directive 2019/882) applies to consumer-facing online services from 28 June 2025. For a BigCommerce site selling to EU consumers, that means the storefront, checkout, account area, and any embedded payment flow have to meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA via the harmonised standard EN 301 549. Microenterprises with under 10 employees and below €2 million in turnover are exempt for services, but not for products.

Fines vary by member state. Germany caps individual penalties at €100,000; France can fine up to 4% of group turnover; Spain reaches €600,000 for serious or repeated breaches. None of those numbers are theoretical — market surveillance authorities have already started auditing storefronts in Germany and France in the run-up to enforcement.

In practice, the work breaks down into three buckets: theme-level fixes (focus styles, contrast, semantics), interaction-level fixes (carousels, modals, drawers, gallery widgets), and content-level fixes (alt text, headings, descriptive link text). The list below covers the BigCommerce-specific failure points we see most often during scans.

Top WCAG failures we see on BigCommerce sites

Across hundreds of BigCommerce scans, the same handful of issues show up over and over. None of them require ripping the theme apart — most are fixable in a few hours by someone comfortable in the platform's editor or template files.

• Stencil theme overrides removing focus styles

  Custom CSS that blanks outlines is the #1 audit finding.

  2.4.7 — Level AA

• Page builder text contrast on sale banners

  Text-on-image promotional banners regularly fail 4.5:1.

  1.4.3 — Level AA

• Quick-view modal focus management

  Some apps trap focus or skip Esc handling.

  2.1.2, 2.4.3

Concrete code fixes for BigCommerce

Below are copy-paste fixes for the most common BigCommerce issues. They assume you have access to your theme code or the platform's custom-code injection panel. If you cannot edit code directly, share these snippets with whoever maintains the site — every one of them is a ten-minute change.

// In assets/scss/_focus.scss, then import into theme.scss
:where(button, a, input, [tabindex]):focus-visible {
  outline: 2px solid #1e1e1e;
  outline-offset: 2px;
}

Tools and plugins worth installing first

• BigCommerce Audit panel

• Stencil CLI for local theme work

How to scan a BigCommerce site without missing anything

Automated scanners catch about 30–40% of WCAG issues; the rest need manual review. The good news is that the 30–40% includes the most expensive issues to remediate after the fact, so an automated scan is the cheapest way to get unstuck. Run one before you change a line of theme code.

• Always audit the published storefront, not the preview.