Most businesses have heard of GDPR. Far fewer have heard of the European Accessibility Act, and its main compliance deadline — June 28, 2025 — has already passed. If your website serves EU customers and you haven't looked at this yet, it's worth ten minutes now.
What it actually requires
The EAA sets accessibility requirements for a wide range of digital products and services sold in the EU — e-commerce, banking, transport, media, telecoms — aligned with WCAG 2.2 AA, the same technical standard most accessibility audits already test against: sufficient color contrast, keyboard navigability, screen-reader-compatible markup, captions and alternatives for non-text content, forms that announce their errors properly rather than relying on color alone.
None of it is exotic. Most of it is the difference between a site built with semantic HTML and real focus states, and one where "accessible" was never part of the brief.
Who actually has to comply
The Act applies to any organization providing in-scope services in the EU — including non-EU companies serving EU customers, so "we're not based there" doesn't exempt you if EU customers use your site. There's a genuine carve-out for micro-enterprises: businesses with fewer than 10 employees and under €2 million in annual revenue are exempt, though compliance is still encouraged for anyone who can manage it. If you're past that size, or you're not sure whether you count, it's worth checking rather than assuming.
The deadline structure also isn't one date for everyone. New products and services launched after June 2025 need to comply immediately; products already on the market before that date generally get until 2030 (though notably, Portugal and a few other member states don't recognize that extension); emergency services have until 2027; long-life self-service terminals get until 2045 or twenty years from installation, whichever is shorter.
Why this is a design decision, not a legal afterthought
Accessibility work is far cheaper when it's a constraint from the start than when it's a retrofit. On this site, that shows up as concrete, ongoing practice: every interactive element carries a visible focus ring on keyboard navigation, heading levels never skip a tier, decorative elements are marked aria-hidden, and every section landmark is labeled by the heading that actually describes it. None of that is a separate accessibility pass bolted on afterward — it's baked into the same component library everything else on the site is built from, so a new page inherits it automatically instead of needing to re-earn it.
That's the practical lesson for anyone rebuilding or commissioning a site right now: ask whoever builds it how accessibility is enforced structurally — in the component layer, the design tokens, the review checklist — rather than as a one-time audit you pay for once and never revisit.
What to actually do next
Run your site through an automated accessibility checker as a first pass — it'll catch maybe half the real issues, but it's free and fast. Then do the manual pass an automated tool can't: tab through your own site with a keyboard only, and see how far you get before something goes silent or invisible. If you can't complete your own checkout or contact form without a mouse, neither can a meaningful share of your visitors.
This is general information, not legal advice — talk to someone who specializes in EU accessibility compliance if the EAA clearly applies to your business and you haven't assessed your exposure yet.