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Zugang für alle — Swiss Accessibility Studies: Independent Audits Show 41 Online Shops and 70 Municipal Websites Falling Short

Switzerland · Zürich · See the Switzerland profile · See the Zürich profile

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Swiss foundation Zugang für alle audits websites with disabled experts: in 2020 only 10 of 41 online shops were good or very good; in 2025, none of 70 municipal sites was fully accessible and 50 (70%) were rated not accessible.

Zugang für alle — Swiss Accessibility Studies: Independent Audits Show 41 Online Shops and 70 Municipal Websites Falling Short

Details

Promoter
Stiftung Zugang für alle (Access for All Foundation)
Period
2020–2025
Keywords
digital accessibility, web accessibility audit, WCAG, e-government, e-commerce, disability

Description

Zugang für alle (Access for All) is a Zurich-based foundation and Swiss certification body for digital accessibility. Its Swiss Accessibility Study (Schweizer Accessibility-Studie) is a recurring independent audit; the 2020 edition was the fifth, and more than half of its experts have a disability themselves.

2020 online-shop edition: between January and March 2020, 41 private and public online shops were tested against WCAG 2.1 and rated from 1 (very poor) to 5 (very good). Only about a quarter (10 shops) were rated good or very good, and only the City of Bern's visitor-parking-card shop reached the top rating. 17 shops scored 3–3.5 (partly usable, with barriers that hinder or block checkout), and 14 (more than a third) scored 2.5 or lower, effectively excluding users with disabilities. Examples include a CAPTCHA that blocks screen-reader users at checkout. Public administrations and federally linked operators performed better than private providers. The study also published an accessibility checklist and a developers' guide.

2025 municipal-website edition: with the investigative newsroom CORRECTIV.Schweiz, the foundation checked 70 Swiss municipal and city websites on five elementary criteria (screen-reader operability, keyboard operability, colour and contrast, captions/audio description, and Easy Language), on the home page and one form page. None was fully accessible; 20 were rated partially accessible and 50 (70%) not accessible, despite a 2020 e-government framework agreement of municipalities and the Disability Equality Act obligating accessibility. The foundation called it 'a frightening picture'.

Limits: the 2025 check covers only five criteria on two pages per site, so real barriers are probably more numerous, and a numerical rating does not by itself show remediation. The practice's value is its transparent, disability-expert methodology and repeated public benchmarking rather than proven improvement; follow-up editions are needed to show change.

Read the full analysis: https://www.netzwoche.ch/news/2020-11-06/nur-ein-viertel-der-schweizer-onlineshops-sind-barrierefrei

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