It reaches businesses that never thought of themselves as European

What it is

The European Accessibility Act sets common accessibility requirements for a defined list of products and services, including e-commerce, banking, transport, and electronic communications. It applies to businesses placing those products or services on the EU market, regardless of where the business itself is established.

Does it apply to you

• You sell to consumers in the EU through a website or app. E-commerce is named in the directive, and the test is the market you serve rather than where your office is.
• You provide one of the other covered services, such as consumer banking, e-books, or passenger transport information.
• Member state law applies to you. The directive is implemented nationally, so the precise wording and enforcement body depend on the country.

What being wrong costs

Enforcement sits with national authorities under each member state implementation, and remedies vary by country. The directive contains an exemption for microenterprises providing services, defined by headcount and turnover, so the smallest businesses may fall outside it. Whether you qualify is a question about your numbers in a specific member state.

What it demands

• Accessible information and interfaces. National implementations point at the harmonised European standard EN 301 549, which for web content incorporates WCAG at Level AA.
• An accessibility statement describing how the service meets the requirements.
• Support and documentation that are themselves accessible.

What WebSpark does

• Sites are built to WCAG 2.2 AA, which is the technical core of what EN 301 549 asks of web content.
• The accessibility statement is built from the facts the tests check, and kept current.

What you can show

• A dated conformance record per route.
• A published accessibility statement naming the standard, the conformance level, and any known gaps.

What stays yours

• Determining whether you are in scope in a given member state, and whether the microenterprise exemption applies to you. That turns on your own figures and on national law.