The European Accessibility Act: what it means for your website
Since 28 June 2025 the EAA applies to a wide range of private-sector digital services. Here is who it covers, what conformance actually requires, and a practical path to get there.
Artykuły są napisane po angielsku.
The European Accessibility Act (EAA) came into force for private-sector digital services on 28 June 2025. It is not a new technical standard so much as a legal requirement that a broad set of products and services be usable by people with disabilities, backed by member-state enforcement.
Who it covers
The EAA reaches beyond public bodies. If you sell to consumers in the EU through a website or app, e-commerce, banking, transport, e-books and ticketing are explicitly in scope, and many other consumer services follow the same expectations. Microenterprises providing services get some relief, but the practical bar for anyone doing business online is the same: your site should meet WCAG 2.1 AA.
What conformance actually requires
WCAG 2.1 AA is a checklist of outcomes, not a coat of paint. The recurring issues we see are unglamorous and fixable:
- Text and controls that fail contrast against their background.
- Images, icons and buttons with no accessible name.
- Forms whose fields are not associated with their labels.
- Keyboard traps and focus that disappears, so a keyboard-only user gets stuck.
- Dynamic content that never announces itself to a screen reader.
A path that holds up
Conformance is a moving target because your site keeps changing. A one-time audit that is out of date the next time you ship a page does not protect you. The path that holds up is scan, remediate, then monitor: establish where you stand, fix the real defects by hand and verify against assistive technology, and re-scan on a schedule so regressions are caught before a regulator or a customer does.
If you want a starting point, run the free scan on your own domain. It grades the page, lists the top WCAG issues, and gives you a concrete list to work from, no account required. If you want the deadline in front of you rather than in a PDF, the compliance calendar lists what falls due where.