The European Accessibility Act Is Live: Does It Apply to Your UK Business?

If you sell to customers in the EU and you are based in the UK, there is a piece of law you may not have heard about that could already apply to you. The European Accessibility Act came into force on 28 June 2025, and the question we keep hearing from business owners is a fair one: surely this is an EU matter, so after Brexit it has nothing to do with us? For a lot of UK businesses, the answer is that it does.

This post explains what the European Accessibility Act is, how to tell whether it applies to your business, what compliance involves in practice, and why making your website accessible is worth doing even if the law turns out not to reach you. It is general information rather than legal advice, so treat it as a starting point and confirm your own position, but it should tell you quickly whether this is something you need to look at.

What the European Accessibility Act is

The European Accessibility Act, or EAA, is an EU law (Directive 2019/882) that requires a range of digital products and services to be accessible to disabled people. It has applied since 28 June 2025, and its aim is straightforward: that someone who relies on a screen reader, navigates by keyboard, or needs strong colour contrast can use the everyday services most of us take for granted, from online shops to banking to e-books.

Rather than leaving each country to set its own rules, the Act harmonises the requirements across the EU, so a business selling into several member states works to one standard instead of twenty-seven.

Does it apply to your UK business?

This is the part that surprises people. The Act attaches to the market, not to where your business is registered. If you provide in-scope services to consumers in the EU, or place in-scope products on the EU market, you can be caught even though you are based in the UK. Brexit does not put you outside it.

The main relief is the microenterprise exemption, and it is worth stating precisely because the detail matters:

• The exemption covers businesses that provide services and have fewer than 10 staff and either an annual turnover or a balance sheet total of no more than €2 million.
• It applies to services only. A microenterprise that manufactures or sells covered physical products does not get the same exemption from the technical requirements.

In plain terms:

• Likely in scope: you sell to EU consumers through your website, and you are above the microenterprise threshold.
• Likely exempt: you provide a service, have fewer than 10 staff, and your turnover or balance sheet is under €2 million.
• Not sure: the test is specific to your circumstances, so confirm your status rather than guess.

The sections below cover what specifically counts as an in-scope service under the Act, what compliance looks like in practice, what the penalties are if it applies to you and you do not act, and why building an accessible site is worth doing regardless of whether the law reaches you.

What counts as in scope

The Act lists particular products and services rather than covering everything online. The services in scope include ecommerce, consumer banking, electronic communications, e-books, and parts of air, rail, bus and waterborne passenger transport, including ticketing. The products in scope include consumer computers and their operating systems, smartphones and similar terminal equipment, e-readers, and self-service terminals such as ATMs and ticket machines.

For most businesses reading this, the relevant category is ecommerce. The Act defines an ecommerce service as one provided at a distance, through a website or app, that lets a consumer conclude a purchase. If an EU consumer can browse and buy on your site, that is an ecommerce service under the Act.

What compliance involves in practice

The EAA sets out the goals, and the practical standard for demonstrating that a website meets them is the harmonised European standard EN 301 549. For web content, that standard maps to WCAG 2.1 level AA, the widely recognised benchmark for web accessibility.

Stripped of the jargon, an accessible site should:

• Work with a keyboard alone, with no mouse required.
• Work with a screen reader, which means proper headings, labelled form fields, and descriptive alt text on images.
• Have enough colour contrast between text and background to be read easily.
• Label buttons and links clearly, so their purpose is obvious.
• Provide captions for video and text alternatives for audio.

None of this is exotic. It is good build quality, and a site built accessibly from the start rarely needs much retrofitting. It is worth noting that EN 301 549 covers more than websites alone, so meeting WCAG 2.1 AA is the core of web compliance rather than the whole story for apps and documents.

On timing, the Act has applied since 28 June 2025. There is limited transition relief running to 28 June 2030 for certain service contracts agreed beforehand and products already in use, but for a new build or a redesign, the expectation is now.

What happens if you ignore it

Penalties are set by each EU member state rather than centrally, and the Directive requires them to be effective, proportionate and dissuasive. In Germany, for example, fines under the national law reach up to €100,000, and in serious cases a non-compliant service can be ordered offline.

It is worth being measured about enforcement. As of late 2025 it was at an early stage across Europe: warning letters, regulator inspections, and a court action in France, rather than a wave of large fines. The direction of travel is clear, though, and the cost of a site that a chunk of your customers cannot use is real whether or not a regulator ever comes knocking.

Accessibility is good business, not just compliance

It is easy to read all of this as a burden, so it is worth saying plainly that accessibility is not only a legal box to tick. Scope estimates the spending power of disabled people and their households in the UK, the so-called Purple Pound, at £274 billion a year, and that businesses lose around £24 billion a year by overlooking disabled customers.

An accessible site is easier for everyone to use, not only people with disabilities. It tends to convert better because the path to purchase is clearer, and it is read more cleanly by search engines, which rewards you on a separate front. Building accessibility in from the start is cheaper and more effective than bolting on an accessibility "overlay" widget later, which often fails to deliver real compliance and can create its own problems.

Final thoughts

If you sell to EU consumers and you are above the microenterprise threshold, the European Accessibility Act probably applies to you, and the work it asks for is the work a well-built website should already be doing. Check your status, and if you are in scope, treat accessibility as part of how the site is built rather than a patch added at the end.

Even if the EAA does not reach you, UK law already expects an accessible site. Under the Equality Act 2010, service providers must make reasonable adjustments so disabled people can use their services, websites included, with WCAG AA as the accepted benchmark. We cover the domestic picture in our guide to website legal requirements for UK businesses. So the practical answer for most UK businesses is the same either way: build it properly, for everyone.

Not Sure Where Your Website Stands?

If you are selling to the EU, or you simply want to know whether your site meets the accessibility mark, get in touch and we will give you an honest assessment. We build accessibility in from the start, so your site stands up to the law and works for every customer who lands on it.