European Accessibility Act
The EU directive that made digital accessibility a legal requirement for products and services sold to European consumers.
The European Accessibility Act (Directive 2019/882) took effect for new products and services on 28 June 2025. It covers consumer-facing digital services sold in the EU — ecommerce, banking and payments, e-books, transport ticketing, telecoms — and it applies to non-EU companies serving EU consumers, which is the part most product teams miss. Micro-enterprises under 10 employees and €2m turnover are exempt for services.
The technical requirement resolves to WCAG 2.1 level AA via the harmonised standard EN 301 549. Beyond the interface, the Act requires an accessibility statement describing conformance and the route to report problems, and enforcement sits with member-state authorities, whose penalties and procedures differ by country.
Practically, it moved accessibility into procurement
The immediate commercial effect has been on B2B sales rather than lawsuits: buyers in scope now ask suppliers for conformance evidence, so a VPAT or accessibility statement has become a deal document.
In practice
A payments provider with no EU entity but EU consumer customers assumed the Act did not apply. Two enterprise prospects requested conformance documentation in the same quarter. The remediation — mostly keyboard access and form labelling in a checkout built years earlier — took a quarter, during which both deals stalled.
Where teams get it wrong
- Assuming it does not apply because the company is not established in the EU.
- Treating it as a one-off remediation instead of an ongoing obligation for new releases.
- Publishing an accessibility statement that overstates conformance, which is itself a compliance risk.
- Auditing only the marketing site and not the authenticated product.
- Waiting for enforcement rather than for procurement, which arrives first.
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Related terms
All terms- WCAGThe Web Content Accessibility Guidelines — the standard almost every accessibility law and procurement contract points at.
- Accessibility AuditA structured evaluation of a product against WCAG, producing a list of failures with severity, location and a route to fixing each one.
- VPATThe Voluntary Product Accessibility Template — the document enterprise procurement asks for before a deal closes.
- Inclusive DesignDesigning for the full range of human variation, treating exclusion as a design outcome rather than an edge case.