What You Should Know About The European Accessibility Act 2025
In June 2025 the European Union is set to implement the European Accessibility Act.
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In June 2025 the European Union is set to implement the European Accessibility Act.
In June 2025 the European Union is set to implement the European Accessibility Act, which aims to improve the lives of more than 87 million people living with disabilities across the EU.
The act seeks to prioritise digital accessibility for businesses of all sizes across a number of sectors, including e-commerce, banking, and electronics.
This is an area that often throws up barriers for people living with disabilities and hampers their participation in society.
Web accessibility, in particular, is something that much of the internet falls short of. According to WebAim, in 2022, 96.8% of home pages tested had WCAG 2 failures.
The Act will build on the existing EU legislation relating to accessibility and will hopefully bring consistency to the approach to digital accessibility across the EU member states.
The Act came into being in June 2019, giving each EU member state three years to transpose it into their national legislation.
Businesses selling products and services covered by the Act must check the national laws and regulations transposing the European Accessibility Act in their country for compliance requirements. Businesses have three years to ensure that their products and services comply with the common EU accessibility requirements.
European Commission
The European Commission provide this useful summary video on their website and a helpful FAQ here.
The looming deadline of the EAA (European Accessibility Act) in 2025 will hopefully ensure that many more businesses prioritise making their digital products and services more accessible.
The European Commission’s website states the following:
All EU Member States must have by now transposed the European Accessibility Act into national law. As of 28 June 2025, companies must ensure that the newly marketed products and services covered by the Act are accessible. Member States may decide to make some exceptions. For instance, they can allow more time for the application of the new rules to service providers using self-service terminals. Microenterprises (i.e., a small business with fewer than 10 employees) which provide services also are exempted from the obligations of the Act. Nevertheless, all microenterprises are encouraged to make their products and services accessible to persons with disabilities.
European Commission
The act will apply to the following products and services:
Products
Services
Each member state will be required to appoint a body to ensure the legislation is being followed, to investigate reports of non-compliance, and to assist organisations that are failing to comply.
Much like the ICO (Information Commissioners Office) was appointed to oversee GDPR compliance in the UK.
If your business operates within the EU it is important to ascertain if the EAA will apply to you. You can start by digesting the information provided in the EU Directive.
It is important to seek out each member state’s EAA legislation, as this will give you a clearer picture of the requirements of the EU countries in which your business operates and any exemptions.
This post is merely an outline of the Act and how it may pertain to business websites. Each business must take it upon themselves to identify whether they are impacted, and their obligations.
As a web development agency, we are most interested in the sections of the act that pertain to our service offering. Primarily those that relate to web accessibility.
The European Disability Forum has published a very useful toolkit for EAA transposition. It states:
The Directive only sets out the absolute minimum requirements that must be met without further detailing how to comply with these requirements. Member States may adopt national laws that are more ambitious than the EU text, but never softer or contradicting.
There already exists a standard, EN 301 549, that public sector websites and apps within the EU were required to meet by 2020. This was drawn up in a previous Web Accessibility EU Directive that has already been transposed into national legislation by EU member states.
It is expected that this same standard (EN 301 549) will apply to the private sector businesses and organisations providing products and services covered by the European Accessibility Act.
This European Standard bears many similarities to and references WCAG. It shares the same compliance level system, with A, AA and AAA.
The Web Accessibility EU Directive sets out AA compliance as the required level for public sector apps and websites. It is safe to assume that so will the EAA. If your business’s app or website is in one of the sectors that will be required to meet EAA compliance, it’s advisable to begin ensuring compliance with both EN 301 549 AA and WCAG AA standards.
You can find the EN 301 549 ICT accessibility standard here.
The European Commission shares the most recent changes to EN 301 549 here. This was last updated in 2022.
You can find more information about version 2.1 of W3C’s WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) here.
We have pushed the importance of digital accessibility for many years. It is a core aspect of providing a well-rounded user experience.
We build websites to WCAG 2.1 A specifications as a minimum and AA or higher for public sector clients and those who operate in the US.
Going forward, we will also be recommending that clients establish whether they are required to comply with these EU laws. If they are, we will advise that their websites should be built to meet WCAG AA and EN 301 549 AA standards.
Maintaining your website’s accessibility should become an ongoing part of your process. Whilst your web development agency may build you a WCAG-compliant website, it’s important to ensure that the content you add and changes you make going forward, continue to meet the required standards. Otherwise, a compliant website can quickly become one that isn’t.
We will continue to watch the roll-out and implementation of the European Accessibility Act. We’ll update this post with any new or relevant guidance or information.