EAA 2025: is your website accessible under EU law?

The European Accessibility Act applies since 28 June 2025. Who must comply, what WCAG 2.1 AA actually requires, and how to check your site — without the legal jargon.

What the European Accessibility Act actually is

The European Accessibility Act (EAA, EU Directive 2019/882) is the EU law that requires many digital products and services to be accessible to people with disabilities. It has applied since 28 June 2025. For websites the practical question is simple: can a person using a screen reader, keyboard-only navigation or high-contrast mode actually use your site and complete a purchase?

The EAA does not invent a new technical standard. It points to WCAG 2.1 level AA through the European standard EN 301 549. So "EAA compliance" for a website means, in practice, meeting WCAG 2.1 AA.

Does the EAA apply to your website?

The short version: if you sell online to consumers (B2C) in the EU and you are not a microenterprise, it most likely applies to you.

Covered: e-commerce services, online banking, ticketing, e-books and several other consumer-facing digital services.
Exempt: microenterprises that provide services — fewer than 10 people and up to EUR 2 million annual turnover.
Grey area: pure B2B sites are generally outside scope, but the line blurs once you sell to consumers too.

Enforcement and fines are set by each member state, not by the directive itself. The amounts and the authority differ by country — for your specific exposure, confirm with a qualified lawyer in your jurisdiction. We confirm the technical side in a free mini-audit.

What 'accessible' means in practice (WCAG 2.1 AA)

WCAG is built on four principles — content must be Perceivable, Operable, Understandable and Robust. For a typical business site or shop, AA compliance comes down to a concrete checklist:

Colour contrast — text vs. background at least 4.5:1 (3:1 for large text).
Keyboard operability — every function usable without a mouse, with a visible focus indicator.
Text alternatives — meaningful alt text on images, labels on form fields.
Structure — correct heading order (one H1, logical H2/H3), landmarks, lists marked up as lists.
Forms — errors announced clearly, fields associated with labels, no colour-only error signalling.
Media — captions for video, no content that flashes more than three times per second.

The most common failures we see

Most sites fail on the same handful of points, and most are cheap to fix once identified:

Low-contrast grey-on-white body text and light placeholder text.
Buttons and icons with no accessible name (a screen reader reads "button, button, button").
Images carrying meaning with empty or missing alt text.
Forms where the error state is shown only by a red border.
Custom dropdowns and modals that trap or skip keyboard focus.
Multiple H1s or skipped heading levels that break navigation for screen-reader users.

Overlay widgets are not compliance

You have probably seen the "accessibility" floating button that promises instant compliance. It does not deliver it. Overlay and toolbar widgets sit on top of the page; they do not fix the underlying HTML, and accessibility advocates and several regulators have repeatedly warned against relying on them. Some have been the subject of lawsuits rather than a defence against them.

Real compliance means fixing the source: the markup, the contrast, the focus order, the form labels. That is what survives an audit and an actual user with assistive technology.

How to check your site

A useful check has two layers, because tools alone are not enough:

Automated scan (e.g. axe-core) catches roughly 30–40% of WCAG issues — contrast, missing alt, basic structure.
Manual expert review covers the rest: real keyboard navigation, screen-reader behaviour, focus management, meaningful sequence.

The output you want is a prioritised list: what fails, which WCAG criterion it maps to, and the specific fix — not a generic score. Our own site scores 100/100 in this audit, and we run the same process on yours.

FAQ — EAA and website accessibility

Does the EAA apply to me?
If you sell online to consumers in the EU and you are not a microenterprise, most likely yes. We confirm it in a free mini-audit.

We already added an accessibility widget — is that enough?
No. Overlays do not fix the code and do not deliver conformance.

Do you guarantee legal compliance?
We deliver a technical audit and remediation against WCAG 2.1 AA. The final legal assessment belongs to a qualified lawyer in your country.

How long does an audit take?
The automated scan plus a manual expert review delivers a prioritised report, typically within 48 hours.

Where to start

If you sell to consumers in the EU, the safe move is to know where you stand before someone else points it out. Start with a check: automated scan plus manual review, a prioritised fix list and a clear scope for remediation.

See our EAA / WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility audit for e-commerce, or open our services and pricing. We fix the source, not a bolted-on widget.