New Accessibility Act in EU 2025

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Sooo apparently there is a new law coming to the EU just like GDPR. Except it’s for accessibility it’s called “European Accessibility Act”. I just found out about this yesterday on a meetup, so I was wondering if others had noticed this or not and what you are doing in your organization to prepare for this.

There can be fines also, for Belgium I believe up to 200.000€ but it depends on the location of the company in the EU.

Mainly for these kind of products and services:

  • computers and operating systems
  • ATMs, ticketing and check-in machines
  • smartphones
  • TV equipment related to digital television services
  • telephony services and related equipment
  • access to audio-visual media services such as television broadcast and related consumer equipment
  • services related to air, bus, rail and waterborne passenger transport
  • banking services
  • e-books
  • e-commerce

Act: European accessibility act - Employment, Social Affairs & Inclusion - European Commission

Q&A: European accessibility act - Employment, Social Affairs & Inclusion - European Commission

PDF: https://www.edf-feph.org/content/uploads/2020/12/final_edf_transposition_toolkit_accessibility_act.pdf

Blog: European Accessibility Act: status in Belgium - Craftzing

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‘Fortunately’, I’m not working on such a product that has to comply.

Generally, I see companies rushing in the last 2-4 months before the deadline to patch things quickly for the most obvious problems where they could be fined and confirm that with lawyers inhouse or consulting. (I’ve already had this experience with other laws like selling electric devices showing the consumption grade).
On top, if the fine is low, some companies would be fine to pay it, if it occurs for a couple of months after.
Or if the things are interpretable or difficult: ‘This will definitely be another GDPR / cookie consent project where websites will gradually start working on this over the next 10 years.’

Something to underline:
‘The European Accessibility Act was passed in 2019, member states are implementing it now and the directive comes into force on 28 June 2025.’

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We also had a quick kickoff meeting on this earlier this month.

We’re SaaS so also sales opportunities by getting the knowledge early.

Not sure how much it will impact our own testing on products as we do tend to cover accessibility as standard these days but yes its on my reading list for before end of year.
Thanks for the links.

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We have known about the existence of the Act since at least 2016, if not earlier. The EU has moved very slowly in drafting and implementing it. We have known about the June 2025 implementation date since at least July 2023.

Unfortunately for those who are affected, it’s going to be a complete mess for a couple of reasons.

Standards
Firstly, the Act mandates conformance with EN 301 549, not WCAG. Unlike the UK, whose law mandates whatever the latest version of WCAG is, the EU copied WCAG 2.1 into their own standards system, expanded the scope and called it EN 301 549.

They have not updated it to include the new WCAG 2.2 success criteria and I have not heard of any plans to do so. You would have thought they will want and need to at some point, but the US Section 508 still uses WCAG 2.0, so maybe not.

Harmonisation
Secondly, one of the supposed benefits of the EU and the Single Market is that standards are harmonised across all the EU countries. But that’s not going to happen. During discussions in other forums, one of my contacts in Germany said their government are going beyond what the Act requires, and that Austria will apply the Act to all commercial websites. On the other hand, the countries in southern and eastern Europe are expected to do the absolute minimum possible, and probably not even that much.

Legal implications
I have no idea how this will work out in practice. Suppose a Spanish company sell as SaaS service that is not covered by the Spanish implementation of the Act, but it is used by people in Austria, whose implementation says that it is covered. Is it covered or isn’t it? Can people in Austria start legal action against the Spanish company even though the website is legal in Spain?

My experience
Fortunately, almost all our clients are based in the UK so we can largely ignore the Act. However, I have just finished testing a Windows desktop application for conformance with EN 301 549 for a client who has a lot of sales in Europe.

The additional requirements of EN 301 549 (some of which also apply to websites) are a pain in the backside, especially since some of them are written so badly that no one seems to know what they mean.

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In general our customers seem to be better informed and prepared for this than they were for GDPR. We have been dealing with questions and contract requirements for a couple of months now.

This has given the topic the importance we needed to get our management to raise the priory. It’s a bit late, but we have more of a chance now. It also helps that countries outside the EU have adopted it and the US had changes in laws with a deadline about a year later.

We are still in the process of establishing accessibility testing in every team. Timelines for UI improvements have been moved forward.

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Thank you for this elaboration @steve.green - just what I needed. I am preparing a presentation on all the compliance things we need to keep an eye out for. And this is just one of them :slight_smile:

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