The European Accessibility Act: does it apply to your website?
Since 28 June 2025, many online services in the EU must be accessible to people with disabilities. Who it covers, who is exempt, and what to check on your site.
Since 28 June 2025, the European Accessibility Act (Directive (EU) 2019/882) has applied across the European Union. In short: certain products and services offered to consumers must be usable by people with disabilities too. Online selling and a range of digital services are among them.
If you run an online shop or sell to customers in the EU, this concerns you. If not, it's still worth reading to the end.
Who it covers
The act covers services aimed at consumers, including:
- e-commerce: selling products and services online to end customers,
- consumer banking services,
- e-books and e-readers,
- transport services (for example, buying tickets online),
- electronic communications.
An ordinary business website that only presents the company, with no online selling, is generally not the focus of this act. The boundaries aren't always clear, so if you sell or take orders through your site, check with a lawyer.
Who is exempt
Microenterprises that provide services are exempt. A microenterprise has fewer than 10 employees and an annual turnover or balance sheet total of no more than €2 million. The exemption applies to services, not to products.
What about businesses outside the EU?
The act applies to services offered to consumers in the EU, wherever the business is based. If your online shop delivers to customers in Slovenia, Croatia or Germany, the rules of the market you sell into apply to you as well. Enforcement and penalties are set by each member state.
This is general information, not legal advice.
What "accessible" looks like in practice
In practice, website accessibility is measured against the WCAG guidelines, usually at level AA. Most of it comes down to a few things:
- Contrast: text must be readable in sunlight and for people with weaker eyesight.
- Image descriptions: an image that carries information needs a description for screen readers.
- Keyboard: everything must work without a mouse, with a visible focus indicator.
- Forms: every field has a clear label, and an error says exactly what's wrong.
- Headings: a logical heading order that screen reader users can navigate by.
- Not colour alone: information mustn't depend on colour only (e.g. "red fields are required").
- Text resizing: the page mustn't fall apart when someone enlarges the text.
- Video: captions for any video with speech.
Plugins that promise accessibility "in one click" don't fix problems in the page's own code. Accessibility is built in while the site is being made.
Why it matters even when the law doesn't oblige you
- More customers: older people, people with weaker eyesight, someone holding a child in one arm and a phone in the other.
- Better SEO: clear headings, image descriptions and clean structure help search engines too.
- Lower costs later: building accessibility in from the start is far cheaper than fixing a finished site.
On this site, for example, text contrast was checked, and colours that fell short of the minimum were changed, in both the dark and the light theme.
If you're not sure where your site stands, get in touch for a free twenty-minute call and we'll go through the most important points.