The European Accessibility Act
Who it binds, what it requires, and where a widget genuinely helps.
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What it is
Directive (EU) 2019/882, the European Accessibility Act, harmonises accessibility requirements for a defined list of products and services across the single market. It has applied since 28 June 2025.
Who it applies to
- E-commerce — any business selling goods or services online to EU consumers.
- Banking and financial services, including consumer credit and payment accounts.
- Electronic communications and their emergency call handling.
- Passenger transport: air, bus, rail and waterborne, including ticketing and real-time information.
- E-books and dedicated reading software.
- Audiovisual media service access — programme guides and playback controls.
Microenterprises providing services — fewer than 10 staff and under €2 million turnover — are exempt from the service obligations, though not from national law that may go further.
The technical standard
The directive states functional requirements rather than naming a specification. Conformity is presumed where the harmonised standard EN 301 549 is met, and EN 301 549 v3.2.1 incorporates WCAG 2.1 Level AA for web content. In practice, WCAG 2.1 AA is the target, and WCAG 2.2 AA is the safer one to build against: EN 301 549 v4.1.1, published in September 2026, moves to WCAG 2.2 and takes over as the harmonised standard once it is cited in the EU Official Journal.
What you have to publish
Annex V of the directive asks service providers to publish information on how the service meets the accessibility requirements, usually in their general terms and conditions or an equivalent document. National laws add to it — Germany's BFSG, for example, also asks for the contact details of the competent market-surveillance authority. This is related to, but not the same as, the accessibility statement public bodies publish under the Web Accessibility Directive. Check what your national law asks for.
Enforcement
Each member state sets its own penalties and designates its own authority, so the exposure differs by market. Several transpositions reach six figures, and a number of them allow repeat penalties for a service that stays non-conforming.
Where SiteAccessible helps — and where it does not
| Requirement area | Widget | Your code |
|---|---|---|
| Perceivable text presentation (resize, spacing, contrast) | Extra controls for visitors who switch them on | Must meet the criteria by default, and survive the change |
| Distinguishable content and colour reliance | Link highlighting adds a non-colour cue on request | Do not encode meaning in colour alone |
| Operable keyboard access | No | Yours entirely |
| Understandable structure, labels and errors | No | Yours entirely |
| Robust, valid, correctly-named markup | No | Yours entirely |
| Accessibility statement | On Pro and Business, a guided form and a hosted page | The content, the conformance status and keeping it current |
A realistic order of work
- Run an automated scan to find the density of issues. Expect it to catch roughly a third of them.
- Fix the structural failures first: alternative text, heading order, form labels, keyboard traps.
- Install the widget so the presentation-layer adjustments are available while the rest is in progress.
- Test the critical journeys manually with a keyboard and a screen reader.
- Publish an accessibility statement that is honest about what is not yet conformant, with a date.
- Re-test on a schedule and keep the results with their dates.
Audits and test seals
Some test schemes exclude any overlay. In Germany, BIK BITV-Test has since November 2025 refused to publish results or award its seal for pages that run a third-party script offering an additional interface — which includes SiteAccessible. If you are working towards such a seal, or an RGAA audit in France, pause the widget on the site being tested (Sites → your site) and tell the auditor that you did.