The European Accessibility Act: What Every Business Selling into the EU Must Know

If your website, app, or digital service reaches customers in the European Union, a significant law has been in force since June 28, 2025. The European Accessibility Act (EAA) is not a distant proposal. It is enforceable today, and it applies to non-EU businesses just as much as it applies to companies headquartered in Paris or Berlin. This guide explains who is covered, what the technical requirements are, and what concrete steps you can take to prepare.

What Is the European Accessibility Act?

The EAA (Directive 2019/882) is a European Union law requiring that a broad range of products and services be accessible to people with disabilities. It came into force across EU member states on June 28, 2025, after a five-year transposition period that began when the directive was adopted in 2019.

The law covers both physical products (ATMs, ticketing machines, consumer electronics) and digital services. For most websites and SaaS businesses, the digital service obligations are the relevant ones. Covered digital services include:

• E-commerce websites selling to EU consumers
• Online banking and financial services
• Electronic communications services (messaging, VoIP)
• Passenger transport booking services (air, rail, bus, waterborne)
• Ebooks and dedicated reading software
• Streaming services providing access to audiovisual media

If your business falls into any of these categories and you have EU customers, the EAA likely applies to you.

The Extraterritorial Scope: US and Canadian Businesses Are Not Exempt

This is the point most non-European businesses miss. The EAA follows the same consumer-protection logic as GDPR: it is triggered by where your customers are located, not where your company is registered. A US e-commerce retailer shipping to Germany, or a Canadian SaaS company billing French subscribers, must comply if they do not qualify for the micro-enterprise exemption described below.

EU member states have appointed market surveillance authorities responsible for enforcement. While enforcement intensity varies by country and enforcement at scale is still ramping up, the legal obligation is real. Ignoring it is a risk decision, not a safe default.

The Micro-Enterprise Exemption

The EAA does include a meaningful carve-out for very small service providers. A business providing services (not products) is exempt if it meets both of the following criteria simultaneously:

• Fewer than 10 employees, AND
• Annual turnover or annual balance sheet total not exceeding 2 million euros

Both conditions must be true. A company with 8 employees and 5 million euros in revenue does not qualify. A company with 3 employees and 1.5 million euros in revenue does.

Note that this exemption applies only to service providers, not to product manufacturers. Also note that even businesses that qualify for the EAA micro-enterprise exemption may still face accessibility obligations under other laws, including the US Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the UK Equality Act, or national accessibility regulations in individual member states.

The Technical Standard: EN 301 549 and WCAG 2.1 AA

The EAA does not spell out every accessibility requirement line by line. Instead, it references EN 301 549, the harmonised European standard for ICT accessibility. For websites and web applications, EN 301 549 incorporates WCAG 2.1 Level AA in full. Meeting WCAG 2.1 AA is the practical benchmark for EAA digital compliance.

WCAG 2.1 AA covers four core principles: content must be perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust. In practice, this means requirements such as:

• All images have meaningful alternative text
• Videos have captions and, where needed, audio description
• All interactive elements are reachable and operable by keyboard alone
• Forms have clear labels and helpful error messages
• Color contrast ratios meet minimum thresholds for text and UI components
• Pages work correctly with screen readers
• No content flashes more than three times per second

There are 78 success criteria at Levels A and AA. Automated tools can reliably detect a meaningful share of failures, but they cannot find everything. Abledly runs two automated engines (axe-core and IBM Equal Access) plus an AI review layer to maximize automated coverage, and offers guided manual review for the issues that automation cannot assess.

What You Are Required to Publish: The Accessibility Statement

An accessible site alone is not enough under the EAA. You are also required to publish an accessibility statement that documents your compliance status, identifies any known non-conformances, explains the reason for each gap, and describes how users can request accessible alternatives or report accessibility problems.

The required contents of the statement vary slightly by member state, because each country transposed the directive into national law with its own implementing regulations. France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and others each have specific national requirements around statement format, update frequency, and the mechanism for user complaints.

Abledly's free accessibility statement generator produces statements tailored to the specific requirements of individual EU member states. You can generate a statement for France (RGAA), Germany (BITV), Spain (UNE 301549), Italy, and others at no cost. The statement should be updated whenever your conformance status changes, and at minimum reviewed annually.

Enforcement: Member-State Fines and Disproportionate-Burden Claims

Enforcement is handled by designated authorities in each EU member state, not by a single EU-wide body. Fines and sanctions vary significantly: some member states have set specific penalty ranges in their national transposition legislation, while others rely on existing administrative penalty frameworks. As of mid-2026, large-scale enforcement actions are still in early stages, but complaints from disability organizations and individual users are already being received by national authorities in several countries.

The EAA does allow businesses to claim a "disproportionate burden" exemption for specific requirements where compliance would impose costs that are genuinely excessive relative to the benefit provided, accounting for the size of the business. However, this is a documented process. You must assess the burden, document the conclusion, notify the relevant authority, and still make whatever improvements are possible without constituting a disproportionate burden. It is not a blanket opt-out.

How to Prepare: A Practical Sequence

1. Run an automated scan

Start with a full automated scan of your site to identify current failures. Use tools that run multiple engines, since no single engine catches everything. Abledly runs axe-core and IBM Equal Access together, which substantially increases coverage compared to either tool alone.

2. Prioritize and fix issues

Not all failures are equal. Focus first on barriers that block core user journeys: checkout flows, sign-up forms, navigation, and primary content areas. Automated scan results should include severity ratings to help you prioritize.

3. Address what automation cannot find

Roughly 30-40% of WCAG failures cannot be detected automatically. These include issues with reading order, link purpose in context, form instructions, and cognitive accessibility. Manual review by someone trained in WCAG testing, or by a user with a disability, is necessary for a complete picture.

4. Publish your accessibility statement

Generate and publish an accessibility statement specific to the member states where you have customers. Be honest about current non-conformances and commit to a remediation timeline. A statement that acknowledges real gaps is legally and reputationally far better than a statement that overclaims full compliance.

5. Set up ongoing monitoring

Accessibility is not a one-time project. Every code deployment is a potential regression. Scheduled scanning and alerting when new failures are introduced keeps your compliance status from drifting backward after the initial remediation effort.