The European Accessibility Act: is your site ready?

What exactly is the EAA?

The European Accessibility Act is a European directive from 2019 that has applied since 28 June 2025. Its goal: make the products and services people use every day, from webshops to banking apps, usable for everyone, including the millions of Europeans with a visual, auditory, motor or cognitive impairment. Each member state has transposed the directive into national law; in Germany, for instance, it is known as the BFSG.

Who does the law apply to?

The EAA targets businesses that provide products or services to consumers. For websites, the most relevant categories are e-commerce (any site where consumers can buy or book something), banking services, e-books, telecommunications and passenger transport. One important nuance: microenterprises, fewer than ten employees and limited turnover, are exempt for services. But businesses that grow, outgrow the exemption. And a purely B2B site falls outside the core of the act, although accessibility is just as sensible there.

What does the law ask of your website in practice?

The directive itself does not prescribe pixels. In practice, compliance runs through the European norm EN 301 549, which for websites comes down to WCAG 2.1, level AA. Concretely, that means among other things:

• Perceivable: sufficient colour contrast, text alternatives for images, captions for video.
• Operable: everything works with a keyboard alone, focus is visible, no content reachable only by mouse.
• Understandable: clear form labels, error messages that explain what went wrong, predictable navigation.
• Robust: correct HTML structure, so screen readers and other assistive technology can interpret the page.

What happens if you don't comply?

Supervision and enforcement are organised nationally; regulators can demand remediation and impose sanctions. But the honest story is bigger than fines: an inaccessible site shuts out part of your visitors, and many accessibility requirements, clear structure, good contrast, logical headings, are exactly the things that make your site better for every visitor and for search engines.

Where do you start?

Don't start with a tool; start with an honest baseline: can you operate your entire site with a keyboard? Is the heading structure sound? Do images have meaningful alternative text? Are forms labelled? Automate after that. And document what you find, an accessibility statement that describes where you actually stand is more honest (and more credible) than one that declares everything green.

This article is general information, not legal advice. If you're unsure whether the act applies to your situation, consult a lawyer.