O Ato Europeu da Acessibilidade: quem tem de cumprir, prazos, isenções

The short version: the European Accessibility Act became enforceable on 28 June 2025 (to re-verify). It covers e-commerce, banking, transport, telecoms, e-books, and more, for businesses selling into the EU, wherever they are based. Microenterprises offering services only, fewer than 10 people and under 2 million euro turnover, are exempt. Everyone else needs a plan, and enforcement has already started.

Let me walk you through it the way I would explain it to a client over coffee, because most of what I read on this is written for lawyers, and you are not one.

Does the EAA actually apply to me?

Short answer: probably, if you sell to people in the EU. Not "if you are registered in the EU." Not "if you have an EU office." If you serve EU customers digitally, in a covered sector, the Act is likely watching you, regardless of where your company sits on a map.

That single fact surprises more business owners than anything else in this piece. I will come back to it in its own section, because it deserves one.

What actually changed on 28 June 2025

Here is the thing worth clearing up first. The European Accessibility Act, formally Directive (EU) 2019/882, was adopted back in 2019. What happened on 28 June 2025 was not the birth of the law. It was the date it became enforceable across the EU's member states, after each country transposed it into national law (Davis Wright Tremaine, to re-verify). So if you have not touched this yet, you have not missed a warning window. You have missed the compliance window itself. That changes the urgency, not the shape of what to do.

Which sectors are actually in scope?

The Act is not a general "make your website accessible" law. It is scoped to specific products and services, and reading the sector list is the fastest way to find out if this concerns you at all.

According to the EUR-Lex summary of the Directive, the covered products and services include consumer electronics such as smartphones, computers, and TV equipment for digital television, self-service terminals like ATMs, ticketing machines, and check-in kiosks, e-commerce services, banking services for consumers, e-books and the reading devices for them, telecommunications services, and elements of air, bus, rail, and water passenger transport such as websites, apps, and electronic ticketing (EUR-Lex, to re-verify).

Notice what is not on that list as its own category: a plain marketing site with no transaction, no booking, and no account behind it. That does not automatically mean you are free and clear, because plenty of "just a brochure site" businesses quietly run a checkout or a booking widget. It means the test is not your industry label. It is what the site or app actually does.

That table is a starting compass, not a verdict. If your business sits near a line in it, that is exactly the conversation worth having with someone qualified, not guessing from a blog table, mine included.

The microenterprise exemption, and where it actually stops helping you

This is the part everyone wants to hear, so let me give it to you straight, including the parts that disappoint.

If you are a microenterprise, meaning fewer than 10 employees and an annual turnover or balance sheet total under 2 million euro, and you provide a service, you are exempt from the EAA's service requirements (Kris Rivenburgh, to re-verify). Both conditions have to be true at once. This exemption is automatic. You do not file for it or wait for approval.

Now the parts that trip people up.

It only covers services, not products. If your microenterprise manufactures, imports, or distributes a covered product, such as a self-service terminal or a piece of consumer electronics, the exemption does not apply to you at all. Size does not excuse a product manufacturer (Rivenburgh, above, to re-verify).

It is not a grace period. The moment you cross 10 employees or 2 million euro turnover, the exemption ends immediately. There is no phase-in, no warning notice, no quarter to sort yourself out (Kris Rivenburgh, to re-verify).

It is separate from "disproportionate burden." Larger businesses sometimes hear about a burden exception and assume it works like the microenterprise one. It does not. Disproportionate burden is open to businesses of any size, but it is narrow: it applies to specific requirements, in specific circumstances, and only after you carry out and document a real assessment of the cost against the benefit. It is not a blanket "we tried" excuse, and an undocumented claim of burden generally does not hold up (Accessible.org, WebYes, to re-verify).

So: small and exempt is real, but it is a narrower door than most people assume, and it is worth checking your actual numbers rather than your gut feeling about your own size.

What if my business is not even based in the EU?

This is the fact I promised to come back to, and it is the one that changes the most minds. The EAA does not care where your company is incorporated. It cares where your customers are.

If you sell a covered product or service to people in the EU, whether you are in Colombo, Toronto, or Sydney, you are an "economic operator" under the Directive and the same requirements reach you (UsableNet, to re-verify). The leverage the EU holds is straightforward: continued access to EU customers, and in serious cases, restriction from the EU market altogether (UsableNet, above, to re-verify). For a business built around online reach, "we are not European" is not the shield it sounds like.

What does compliance actually mean, day to day?

Compliance is not a vibe. It is a named technical standard.

The EAA points to EN 301 549 as the harmonized European standard for digital accessibility. The current version, 3.2.1, incorporates WCAG 2.1 at Level AA in full for web content, and extends further into non-web software, apps, and even hardware and documentation (WCAG.com, to re-verify). In plain terms: if your website or app already meets WCAG 2.1 AA, the bulk of your work is done, but not necessarily all of it, because EN 301 549 reaches into places WCAG does not, like physical self-service terminals.

If you already run accessibility audits against WCAG 2.1 AA, you are building on solid ground. If you have never run one, that is the honest starting point, not a schema tweak or a plugin.

What happens if I get this wrong?

Here is where I want to be straight with you rather than dramatic. Penalties are not harmonized across the EU. Each country sets its own, and the range is wide enough that "the EU fine" is not really a single number.

(Figures per web-accessibility-checker.com's EAA fines by country roundup, to re-verify at each country's official transposition text before you rely on a number.)

A wrinkle worth knowing: if you sell into several EU countries, each national authority can act independently. A site serving France, Germany, and Spain could, in principle, face three separate enforcement tracks over the same underlying gap (web-accessibility-checker.com, above, to re-verify). That is the real cost of treating this as a single, one-off fix rather than an ongoing discipline.

Is enforcement actually happening, or is this still theoretical?

It is not theoretical anymore, and this is the update that should move this up your list if it has been sitting there since June.

On 12 November 2025, two French disability rights organizations, ApiDV and Droit Pluriel, backed by the legal collective Intérêt à Agir, filed emergency injunctions against four of France's largest grocery retailers: Auchan, Carrefour, E.Leclerc, and Picard Surgelés, over websites and apps that visually impaired shoppers reportedly could not use independently (TestParty, to re-verify). It did not come out of nowhere: the organizations had sent formal notices in July 2025, given the retailers until 1 September 2025 to fix the issues, and only went to court once nothing meaningful changed (TestParty, above, to re-verify). It is widely described as the first major lawsuit under the EAA, and it hands advocacy groups a working template: notice, deadline, then court (TestParty, above; to re-verify).

If you have been treating the June deadline as a formality nobody actually checks, that assumption stopped being safe in November 2025.

Where the honest grey areas are

I would rather tell you what is unsettled than pretend this is all tidy.

Whether a specific "content that predates the deadline and is never updated" carve-out applies to your exact situation is genuinely contested and depends on your national transposition, not just the Directive text (to re-verify locally). The exact threshold at which "disproportionate burden" tips from valid to invalid has not been stress-tested by much case law yet. And because each of the 27 member states writes its own penalty schedule and enforcement style, what counts as low risk in one country can be a live lawsuit in another. If a page tells you this is all settled and simple, be a little skeptical of that page, mine included.

A plain note: this article is not legal advice. It is a starting map, not a legal opinion on your specific business. For anything with money or litigation risk attached, talk to a lawyer who knows your countries of operation.

What I would actually do this week

1. Check the sector table above against what your site or app actually does, not your industry label.
2. Run your real numbers, employees and turnover, against the microenterprise threshold. Do not eyeball it.
3. If you are in scope, run a WCAG 2.1 AA audit as your floor, then check what EN 301 549 asks for beyond the web layer.
4. If you sell into multiple EU countries, treat each one as its own enforcement risk, not one shared number.
5. If a claim in this piece changes your risk picture, verify it at the source before you act on it. I have flagged every one for exactly that reason.