The European Accessibility Act: What It Means for Your Business

The European Accessibility Act (EAA) is the most significant accessibility legislation to affect the private sector in Europe. Adopted as EU Directive 2019/882, the EAA became enforceable across all 27 EU member states on June 28, 2025. It mandates that a wide range of products and services be accessible to people with disabilities, bringing private sector obligations in line with what the public sector has faced for years.

Who Must Comply

The EAA applies to organizations operating in the EU that have 10 or more employees and an annual turnover or total balance sheet exceeding €2 million. Micro-enterprises below these thresholds are exempt, though they are encouraged to comply voluntarily.

Critically, the EAA applies based on where your customers are, not where your company is headquartered. A company based in the United States, Japan, or anywhere else that sells products or services to consumers in the EU must comply with the EAA for those products and services. This extraterritorial reach means that the EAA effectively becomes a global standard for any business with European customers.

What Products and Services Are Covered

The EAA covers a specific list of products and services that were identified as having the greatest impact on the daily lives of people with disabilities:

Products: Computers and operating systems, self-service terminals (ATMs, ticketing machines, check-in kiosks), consumer telecommunications equipment, audiovisual media service equipment, and e-book readers.

Services: E-commerce services, banking services, electronic communications services, services providing access to audiovisual media, transport services (air, bus, rail, and waterborne) for specific elements, and e-books and dedicated software.

E-commerce is particularly broadly defined — if you sell products or services to consumers online, you are almost certainly covered.

Technical Requirements

The EAA establishes functional accessibility requirements aligned with the POUR principles: products and services must be perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust. However, the EAA does not specify detailed technical standards directly.

Instead, compliance is demonstrated through conformance with harmonized European standards. For digital content, the relevant standard is EN 301 549, which incorporates WCAG 2.1 Level AA for web content. EN 301 549 is currently being updated to include WCAG 2.2, and organizations are advised to target WCAG 2.2 AA to stay ahead of the update.

Conformance with these harmonized standards creates a "presumption of conformity" with the EAA. This means that if you can demonstrate your digital products and services meet EN 301 549, you are presumed to comply with the EAA unless proven otherwise.

What the European Commission Has Said About Overlay Widgets

The European Commission has explicitly stated that automated accessibility overlay widgets do not provide compliance. Their position is clear: claims that a website can be made fully compliant without manual intervention are not realistic, because no automated tool can cover all WCAG criteria. Organizations relying on overlay widgets for compliance are taking a significant risk.

Timelines

June 28, 2025: The EAA became enforceable. All newly published digital content, new products, and new services must meet EAA requirements from this date.

June 28, 2030: All existing digital content must be fully compliant. This gives organizations a transition period for legacy content, but new content must be accessible immediately.

Enforcement and Penalties

Each EU member state is responsible for enforcing the EAA within its borders. Member states must designate enforcement bodies, establish complaint mechanisms, and define penalties for non-compliance. Penalties must be "effective, proportionate, and dissuasive" — language that mirrors the GDPR framework.

While the specific penalties vary by country, the EAA gives consumers the right to file complaints with national enforcement bodies and to pursue legal action against non-compliant organizations. Given the precedent set by GDPR enforcement, where fines have reached into the billions of euros, organizations should take EAA compliance seriously.

Accessibility Statements

The EAA requires organizations to publish accessible statements describing how their products and services meet the accessibility requirements. These statements must be publicly available and kept current.

Steps to Compliance

Step 1: Assess your current state. Conduct a thorough accessibility audit of your digital products and services against WCAG 2.2 Level AA.

Step 2: Develop a remediation plan. Prioritize issues by severity and impact. Address critical barriers first.

Step 3: Implement fixes. Remediate identified issues through design updates, code changes, and content corrections.

Step 4: Establish ongoing processes. Integrate accessibility into your design system, development workflow, and content creation processes. Set up automated monitoring.

Step 5: Document and publish. Prepare your accessibility statement and make it available on your website. Document your conformance status and any known limitations.