Short answer (TL;DR)
Since June 28, 2025, the European Accessibility Act (EAA) has been in force across the EU, transposed into national law in every member state. Online stores and e-service providers must bring their sites in line with WCAG 2.2 at level AA. Microenterprises with fewer than 10 employees and under about $2 million in annual revenue are exempt when they provide services. Fines for companies run from roughly $3,000 to $33,000, enforced by national market surveillance authorities. An accessible site also improves SEO and conversions, so it pays off even for businesses the law does not formally cover.
What changed on June 28, 2025
The European Accessibility Act (EU Directive 2019/882) started applying in every member state on June 28, 2025. Each country transposed it into its own statute. Before that, web accessibility was governed only by the 2016 EU Web Accessibility Directive, which binds the public sector: municipalities, ministries, schools and public institutions. The EAA is the first rule that extends the accessibility obligation to private companies.
The law covers e-commerce, consumer banking services, electronic communications, passenger transport services (buying tickets online), e-books and access to audiovisual media services. For site owners, e-commerce is the category that matters. If you sell products or services through your site, take orders or take payments, you fall into it. A plain brochure site with no online sales is outside the scope, and no obligation arises for it.
If you are a US business, the trigger is not where your company sits but where your customers are. Sell into the EU market and the same rules apply to your storefront.
Does the law apply to your company
Good news for the smallest players: microenterprises that provide services are fully exempt. Under the law, a microenterprise has fewer than 10 employees and annual revenue or a balance sheet total up to about $2 million. Most sole proprietors and small LLCs are therefore not legally bound. Watch out with products, though: microenterprises that place listed products on the market (payment terminals or e-readers, for example) get no exemption.
| Who | Obligation | Deadline |
|---|---|---|
| Public sector (municipalities, schools, agencies) | accessibility under the EU Web Accessibility Directive | in force since 2018 |
| Microenterprise providing services (under 10 employees, under ~$2M) | exempt from the EAA | no deadline |
| Online store run by a company with 10+ employees or over ~$2M | WCAG 2.2 AA and an accessibility statement | since June 28, 2025 |
| Services under contracts signed before June 28, 2025 | transition period | until June 28, 2030 |
Even if you are exempt, think twice. Customers with disabilities do not disappear because the law leaves you alone. And if you grow past the microenterprise threshold, the obligation kicks in immediately.
What are the fines and who checks
Products and e-commerce are supervised by national market surveillance authorities, with sector regulators handling specific areas, for example telecom regulators for electronic communications and central banks for banking services. Fines for companies range from roughly $3,000 to $33,000 according to a 2025 analysis by law firm Svab in Stepec, and the responsible individual can be fined on top of that. Beyond the fine, an inspector can order the non-compliance fixed within a set deadline and, in the worst case, order the service pulled.
Any consumer or disability organization can file a complaint. In practice that means your risk is not driven by the odds of a random inspection, it is driven by a single complaint from one frustrated user.
What an accessible website means in practice
The technical benchmark is WCAG 2.2 at level AA (via the European standard EN 301 549). WCAG rests on four principles: content must be perceivable, operable, understandable and robust. Translated into everyday work on a site:
- Text has a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 against its background.
- Every meaningful image has alt text that says what is in it.
- The whole site works with a keyboard alone, no mouse, and focus is visible.
- Form fields have labels, and errors are described in words, not just in red.
- Video has captions, and audio does not autoplay.
- Headings H1 through H3 follow a logical structure, and links say where they lead.
None of this requires special technology. It does require discipline in how you build and maintain the site.
Six errors we find almost everywhere
The WebAIM Million study, which machine-tests a million of the most visited home pages every year, found in February 2026 that 95.9 percent of pages have at least one WCAG error. The average page has 56.1 of them. Just six error categories account for 96 percent of everything detected.
| Error | Share of pages (WebAIM 2026) |
|---|---|
| Low contrast text | 83.9% |
| Missing image alt text | 53.1% |
| Form inputs without labels | 51.0% |
| Empty links | 46.3% |
| Empty buttons | 30.6% |
| Missing document language | 13.5% |
That is actually encouraging. Fix those six things on your site and you have cleared the large majority of errors that an automated compliance scan will flag too. None of them require a rebuild, all of them can be handled inside your existing template.
Why accessibility pays off even without the law
Around 87 million people in the European Union live with a disability, more than 15 percent of the population. Add older users with weaker eyesight and motor control, people with temporary injuries, and everyone using your site in bright sun, one-handed, or on a slow connection. An inaccessible site makes buying harder or impossible for all of them.
The second benefit is SEO. Google rewards the same things WCAG demands: image alt text, a logical heading structure, descriptive links, readable copy and working on mobile. A page a screen reader can read easily is a page Google's crawler reads easily, and increasingly AI search engines too. Accessibility is not a cost next to SEO, it is part of the same work.
The third benefit is conversions. Form labels, clear error messages and visible buttons cut abandoned checkouts for every user, not just the ones facing barriers.
How to start: six steps for this month
1. Run a free automated scan. WAVE (wave.webaim.org) or the Lighthouse tab in Chrome will show the main errors in a minute. 2. Check your contrasts. WebAIM's Contrast Checker tells you whether your colors hit the 4.5:1 ratio. 3. Fill in alt text. Start with store products and images that carry information. 4. Fix your forms. Every field gets a visible label, and error messages say what to correct. 5. Put the mouse down. Try placing an order using only Tab and Enter. Wherever you get stuck, a screen reader user gets stuck too. 6. Publish an accessibility statement. Covered businesses are required to have one, describing compliance status and a contact for feedback.
One more note on deadlines for covered businesses: new services had to be compliant as of June 28, 2025, while services under older contracts get a transition period that ends June 28, 2030. Five years sounds like plenty, but rebuilding a store, picking new colors and systematically cleaning up content usually happen alongside regular work, so it is smarter to start at your next redesign than right before the deadline.
Frequently asked questions
I have a brochure site with no online sales. Does the law cover me? No. It covers e-commerce and the listed services, not every website. Public sector accessibility rules only bind public bodies.
Does an accessibility widget solve compliance? No. Plugins that enlarge text and switch contrast do not fix the code-level errors WCAG measures. Some of them actively make screen reader use worse. Compliance is built into the site itself.
How much does compliance cost? It depends on where you start. Fixing the six most common errors on a smaller store is a matter of hours, not weeks. A full audit with manual testing and an EN 301 549 report from a specialist provider runs from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars, still less than the low end of the fine range.