The retail apocalypse of 2026: How accessibility could save struggling chains

Hundreds of well-known retail chains have announced store closures in 2026, and analysts say the wave isn't slowing down. According to Business Insider,(opens in a new tab) more than 1,200 closures have already been publicly announced this year, spanning everything from legacy department stores to fast food chains to outdoor retailers.

Retail experts point to the usual suspects: rising costs, shifting shopping habits, and too many physical locations chasing too few customers. For many chains, the response has been the same: close underperforming stores and double down on e-commerce. While retailers are fighting to hold onto every customer they can, many of their websites and apps are actively turning shoppers away due to inaccessibility. And that's a problem with a real price tag attached.

What does "inaccessible" actually cost a retailer?

People with disabilities, along with their friends and family, control roughly $18 trillion in spending power globally, according to the Return on Disability Group(opens in a new tab). Retail brands are underserving this group, often without realizing it.

AudioEye's Digital Accessibility Index(opens in a new tab) found that retail sites have some of the highest failure rates for accessibility standards across any industry. The issues aren't always visible to the average shopper: product images without descriptions, checkout forms that don't work with a keyboard, buttons a screen reader can't identify. But for customers who rely on assistive technology, these are the difference between completing a purchase and leaving the site entirely.

The cost isn't just lost transactions. According to a Click-Away Pound Report(opens in a new tab), 69% of users with access needs will leave a website they find difficult to use, and 83% limit their shopping to sites they already know work for them. In a moment when retail brands are desperately trying to grow their online revenue to offset store closures, that's a significant pool of customers to be pushing away.

Why AI is making this more urgent, not less

Retailers are building and rebuilding their digital experiences faster than ever, and AI is a major reason for that. Landing pages that used to take weeks now get launched in days. Product content scales without additional headcount. The speed is real, and the efficiency gains are also real.

The problem, as AudioEye's CMO Chad Sollis recently noted(opens in a new tab), is that AI-generated web experiences aren't automatically accessible to everyone. When teams move fast, and accessibility isn't part of the process, accessibility issues get baked into new pages at the same speed new pages get built.

The result is a compounding problem: more pages, more issues, and customers with disabilities arriving at digital experiences that look fine on the surface but don't work for them in practice.

The lawsuit risk sitting on top of the revenue risk

Retailers that aren't thinking about accessibility as a business issue are almost certainly going to encounter it as a legal one. According to AudioEye’s research,(opens in a new tab) 78% of accessibility lawsuits target online retailers, and filings have doubled since 2020. 

The research also found that 38% of companies sued in 2025 were already using an accessibility tool of some kind. The issue isn't that businesses aren't trying. It's that the tools many of them are using, often simple automated widgets, don't cover enough ground to hold up when it counts.

For brands already navigating the retail apocalypse, an accessibility lawsuit is the last thing they can afford. Settlements typically run between $15,000 and $75,000(opens in a new tab) and rise with each recurrence. Class actions can reach into the millions.

What actually works

The retailers best positioned to weather this moment are the ones reprioritizing and rethinking their digital experience from the ground up, and accessibility is an often-overlooked place to start. A more accessible website also loads cleaner, navigates more clearly, and converts better across the board. Many business leaders believe(opens in a new tab) that addressing accessibility issues can lead to lower bounce rates, fewer abandoned carts, and a smoother checkout experience for every customer.

There's also a discoverability angle that most retail teams haven't fully reckoned with yet. The same issues that create friction for users with disabilities, things like inconsistent navigation, unclear structure, and unlabeled interactions, are the same issues that make it harder for AI systems to interpret and surface a site's content. As nearly 60% of consumers now use AI tools when researching purchases, according to a UVA Darden report,(opens in a new tab) an inaccessible site could be the difference between being found in an AI search and being completely left out. 

Retail has always rewarded the brands that meet customers where they are. Investing in digital accessibility is one of the clearest ways to do that, making sure that when customers arrive, whether through a search engine, an AI tool, or a direct link, the experience actually works for them. For an industry facing one of its most disruptive moments in decades, that could be the survival strategy hiding in plain sight.