Blog · 6 November 2026 · 9 min read

The European Accessibility Act and your website: who must comply, who is exempt, what to do

Since 28 June 2025, EU law requires private businesses, not just public bodies, to make certain digital services accessible: online shops, booking systems, banking, e-books. A lot of what circulates about it is fear marketing (“every website must pass WCAG or you get fined”). This article sorts out who the law really applies to, who is exempt, what you concretely have to do, and why accessibility pays off even if the law does not reach you.

This is not legal advice. It is a simplified summary of the legal situation as of November 2026; national implementations differ in detail. Check your own situation with a lawyer.

Where it comes from

The European Accessibility Act (EAA, Directive (EU) 2019/882) is an EU directive, which means each member state has transposed it into its own law: Germany’s BFSG, Poland’s “Polski Akt o Dostępności”, Ireland’s S.I. 636/2023, and so on. The rules apply from 28 June 2025 in all member states. If you sell to consumers in the EU, the law of each country you sell into can apply to you, even if your company is based outside the EU.

Before the EAA, accessibility laws in most EU countries covered only the public sector (Web Accessibility Directive 2016/2102). The EAA is the first EU-wide act that reaches private businesses, though not all of them.

Does it apply to your website? Three questions

1. Do you provide one of the covered services?

The Act does not say “every website must be accessible”. It lists specific products and services. For a typical business the relevant item is e-commerce services, defined as services provided at a distance, through websites and mobile applications, by electronic means and at the individual request of a consumer with a view to concluding a consumer contract. Also covered: consumer banking, e-books and e-readers, electronic communications, access to audiovisual media, and parts of passenger transport (websites, apps, e-tickets).

In practice:

• Online shop selling to consumers: yes, whatever the product (clothing, cosmetics, online courses, medicines).
• Online booking or ordering with payment (appointments, rooms, tickets): yes, because the contract is concluded online.
• Brochure website with a description of your services, a phone number and a contact form: generally no. No contract is concluded on the site, so the statutory duties probably do not reach you (but see below why it is still worth it).
• B2B only: the Act protects consumers. A purely business-to-business shop does not fit the definition, unless private individuals actually buy from you too.

2. Are you a microenterprise?

The Act does not apply to services provided by microenterprises: businesses with fewer than 10 employees and an annual turnover or balance sheet total not exceeding EUR 2 million. Sole traders and most small shops fall under this definition, so they are off the hook for services. Two traps:

• The exemption covers services, not products. If you manufacture, import or distribute covered products (computers, smartphones, e-readers, payment terminals), the product obligations apply regardless of company size.
• Thresholds count for the whole company, not the e-commerce team. A 12-person firm with a small web shop is not a microenterprise.

3. Can a larger company opt out?

Businesses that are not microenterprises can invoke “disproportionate burden” or “fundamental alteration”, but this is not an automatic exemption: you must document it with an assessment and, in most countries, notify the supervisory authority. For an ordinary online shop it is hard to argue that proper colour contrast and image descriptions are a disproportionate cost.

What “accessible” concretely means

The directive itself phrases requirements functionally (“perceivable, operable, understandable, robust”). The specifics come from the harmonised standard EN 301 549 (currently cited version V3.2.1, 2021), whose chapter on web content maps directly onto WCAG 2.1 Level AA. If your site meets WCAG 2.1 AA, it is presumed to meet the Act’s requirements for web content. This is the same level public-sector sites have had to meet for years, so the knowledge and tools already exist.

Beyond the site itself there are information duties: in your terms of service (or an equivalent document) you must explain how the service meets the accessibility requirements, and some countries require you to notify the authority if it does not, along with your remediation plan.

The most common failures we find on business websites

WCAG has dozens of criteria, but most sites fail on the same handful. The table shows what each one is, who it excludes and how hard it is to fix.

What an automated test catches, and what it does not

Tools such as axe-core (used by Lighthouse and by our audit) reliably detect roughly 30–40% of the criteria: contrast, missing alt, labels, button names, heading structure, language attributes, ARIA correctness. That is precisely the part that fails most often and is easiest to fix, so it is the right place to start.

An automated tool cannot judge whether alt text makes sense (“IMG_2034.jpg” fills the attribute perfectly well), whether focus order is logical, whether error messages are understandable, or whether a video’s captions are any good. That needs a manual test: walking through the purchase path with the keyboard alone and once with a screen reader (NVDA is free on Windows, VoiceOver is built into macOS and iOS, TalkBack into Android). If your site has one key path (basket to payment), that test is about an hour of work.

What happens if you do not comply

Enforcement is national: each country has designated market surveillance authorities, and consumers can file complaints with them. The procedure is generally staged: first a notice to remedy the problems within a deadline, and only if you ignore it a fine or an order to withdraw the service. Fine levels vary by country (Germany’s BFSG provides for up to EUR 100,000; Poland ties the cap to average wages and turnover). In other words, nobody gets fined for a single missing alt on the day of an inspection, but an ignored notice does cost money.

The bigger risk is usually commercial rather than regulatory: public procurement and large B2B customers increasingly ask for an accessibility statement, and platforms and marketplaces pass the obligations on to sellers in their terms.

Why it is worth doing even if the Act does not cover you

• More customers. Around one in four adults in the EU reports some disability, and the same improvements help older users, people with temporary injuries and anyone in bad conditions (sunlight, noise, one hand busy). An inaccessible checkout is simply an abandoned checkout.
• The same fixes help SEO. Alt text, heading structure, meaningful links, usable forms: Google evaluates a page much like a screen reader does.
• Cheaper now than later. Accessibility designed in costs almost nothing; retrofitted, it means template rework. If you are planning a new site, put WCAG 2.1 AA into the brief for the agency.
• “Micro” is not forever. A company with 8 people today may have 12 in two years, and then the rules apply with no transition period.

Where to start: a one-week plan

1. Establish whether you are covered (the three questions above). If you are, say so in your terms together with how you provide accessibility.
2. Run an automated test on the home page, a product page, the basket and the checkout. List the errors by frequency, not by the order in the report.
3. Fix the cheap errors: contrast, field labels, button names, headings, language attribute. This is usually 80% of the error count and a day of work.
4. Walk the purchase path with the keyboard (Tab, Enter, Esc) and once with a screen reader. Note where you got stuck.
5. Fill in the content: meaningful alt for product photos, captions for videos, understandable error messages in forms.
6. Repeat after every larger change to the template or plugins; that is when accessibility most often breaks.