Does the European Accessibility Act Apply to You: Two Numbers Instead of Panic

It’s evening, you’re scrolling with one hand because the other is holding a mug. The headline: “Fines for inaccessible websites are already in effect.” Below it - a number with several zeros and the word “everyone.” You open it, read three paragraphs, understand approximately nothing except that you’ve already violated something. You close the tab, go to bed with a new anxiety you can neither verify nor fix, and in the morning it’s still there.

And here’s the real trick. In that same law that just scared you, there’s a separate clause that may apply to your specific size of business - and exempt you from the requirements. It just lives in the part of the text that headlines never reach: there are no sums there, no word “fine,” so it never makes the news. The fastest way to ruin your week is to read about a law that has an exemption written specifically for you, and stop at the paragraph about penalties.

This article is about how to check whether your activities fall within the European Accessibility Act before paying someone to rebuild your site. How to make a site accessible is a separate, longer conversation, and useful whether or not this particular directive requires it. Here we focus on the initial scope check: the service or product, the EU market, company size and the relevant national implementation. This is general editorial guidance, not a legal opinion for your business.

The document everyone calls the European Accessibility Act is officially named Directive (EU) 2019/882. This is not a separate “website law” or a special rule for online shops. It’s a European Union directive that sets uniform accessibility requirements for a range of products and services - essentially bringing different national rules to a common denominator so businesses don’t have to invent a separate approach for each country. E-commerce is included in that list, and for it the obligations have been in effect since June 28, 2025.

Now a detail worth understanding once: for a business checking its obligations, the directive must be read alongside the relevant national implementing law. Article 31 required member states to transpose it and apply those measures from June 28, 2025. National rules identify the responsible authorities and sanctions within the directive’s framework. That’s why an article about fines in one country doesn’t describe the situation in another. And that’s why you won’t see specific fine amounts here: a number from a headline needs a country, a legal provision and the circumstances of the infringement before it tells you anything useful.

What you take from this: the phrase ‘European Accessibility Act is in effect’ doesn’t settle your own obligations. Start with two questions. First: do you provide a product or service listed in Article 2, and is there a relevant connection to the EU market? For services, Article 3(4) includes offers to consumers in the Union; you should not wait for the first completed EU order to check. Second: if you provide an in-scope service, do you qualify for the microenterprise exemption? Company size is a useful early filter that starts with your own records, without a call to a developer. It is not the whole legal assessment. Let’s look at that filter first.

Article 4(5) is the provision worth opening before the headlines about fines. It exempts microenterprises providing services from the accessibility requirements referred to in Article 4(3) and the obligations relating to compliance with those requirements. It doesn’t merely soften them or grant a grace period: it provides an exemption. Read its boundary just as carefully: this concerns those service requirements under this directive, not every accessibility duty that might arise under other applicable law. Establishing that your business actually qualifies remains part of the check.

The next logical question: who counts as a microenterprise? The directive states the definition directly in Article 3(23): an enterprise employing fewer than 10 persons, with annual turnover not exceeding €2 million or an annual balance sheet total not exceeding €2 million. Recital 53 also refers to Recommendation 2003/361/EC and the need genuinely to meet its requirements. That Recommendation supplies the wider framework for reference periods, staff calculation and partner or linked enterprises. Check how the relevant national EAA rules apply that framework to your case.

Those are your two threshold tests: staff size and financial size. Not how complex your website is or whether you’ve already hired a lawyer. Payroll and annual accounts are the starting evidence, but today’s payroll alone isn’t the calculation. Under Annex Articles 4–6 of the Recommendation, use the latest approved accounting period and annual work units: someone working full-time for the whole year counts as one unit, while part-time, seasonal and part-year work counts proportionally. Owner-managers are included; apprentices and students with vocational training contracts are excluded, and maternity or parental leave periods are not counted. Partner and linked enterprises can add staff and financial data to your totals.

Keep the ‘or’ in the financial test: turnover and balance sheet total do not both have to stay below the ceiling. Record both, because turnover is annual revenue, whereas the balance sheet total measures assets at the reporting date. Under the Recommendation, turnover excludes VAT and other indirect taxes. The staff threshold is strictly fewer than 10; the financial ceiling includes exactly €2 million.

What These Two Numbers Look Like in a Real Example

Imagine Oksana in a hypothetical example, not a client case. She makes ceramics in a workshop near Lviv, sells through her own consumer shop, and accepts orders from Germany and Poland. Four people work with her: two at the wheel, one on packing and one on orders and correspondence. Last year the shop had €280,000 in turnover excluding VAT and other indirect taxes. Oksana read that evening headline and spent three days wondering whether she’d have to pay for a new site before peak season.

Assume all five, including Oksana as owner-manager, worked full-time throughout the latest approved accounting year; the business is autonomous, has consistently remained below the thresholds, and the relevant national implementation confirms this calculation. Five annual work units are below 10 and €280,000 is below €2 million, so the financial test is met through turnover without needing the balance sheet alternative. Under those assumptions, her e-commerce service qualifies for Article 4(5). Her decision: record the basis for the exemption and do not commission a rebuild solely because of an EAA fine headline; put actual checkout barriers into ordinary maintenance. Evidence of a linked business, different staff data or national rules affecting the assessment would reopen that conclusion. Ceramics themselves are not an Article 2(1) product category, and this conclusion does not settle obligations under other laws.

It’s worth being honest about the limits of this text: checking two numbers is not a legal opinion for your company. It’s a quick way to understand what field you’re even in before spending money. If you’re close to the boundary - nine people, turnover approaching two million - that’s exactly the case where one paid hour with a lawyer is worth more than three sleepless nights. Structures with related or partner companies can be separately tricky: there the math of “how many of us are in the office” stops working, and it’s better not to calculate that alone.

And one more scenario that’s easy to miss: numbers don’t lock in forever, but growth does not justify assuming the exemption vanishes immediately. A business might grow from eight people and €1.4 million turnover to twelve people and €3 million. That is a reason to reassess, not enough information to date the loss of status. Annex Article 4(2) of Recommendation 2003/361/EC provides a two-consecutive-accounting-period rule for threshold changes. The annual staff calculation, the balance sheet alternative and the applicable national EAA implementation still matter. Check the timing before assuming either immediate loss or an automatic two-year grace period for your case.

Our editorial recommendation is to revisit the check with the annual accounts and also when ownership, staffing, the product range or EU offers materially change. Keep the note where you keep the annual report, so the next headline sends you to evidence rather than back to panic. This review routine is our practical suggestion, not a reporting schedule imposed by Article 4(5).

Now a detail that makes it easy to celebrate too soon. The Article 4(5) exemption is written about services. There is no equivalent blanket microenterprise exemption for products covered by Article 2(1). One business can therefore be exempt for its e-commerce service while still having duties for a covered product it manufactures, imports or distributes. Some lighter provisions do exist: Article 14(4), for example, exempts microenterprises dealing with products from documenting the assessment of fundamental alteration or disproportionate burden, while still requiring relevant facts on an authority’s request. That is not a general exemption from product accessibility requirements.

The difference is practical. An online shop offering a distance service electronically at a consumer’s individual request with a view to concluding a consumer contract fits the e-commerce definition in Article 3(30). That service can be covered regardless of whether the goods sold are themselves covered products. A screen, buttons, sound or software are ways of operating a thing; their presence alone does not place that thing within Article 2(1). That list covers consumer general-purpose computer hardware and its operating systems, payment terminals and specified self-service terminals, specified consumer communications and audiovisual access equipment, and e-readers. Check the category and its conditions, not just whether the product has an interface.

Imagine Igor in another hypothetical example. He has six people and annual turnover of about €1 million; assume the properly calculated figures and relevant national rules confirm microenterprise status. He makes kitchen scales with a screen, buttons and a voice readout of the weight, and sells them to consumers including in the EU. His e-commerce service can qualify for the same Article 4(5) exemption as Oksana’s. But ordinary kitchen scales are not one of the Article 2(1) product categories merely because they have a digital interface or speech output. On the stated facts, the decision is to record that product-scope conclusion, not start an EAA product conformity project for the scales. This does not settle other product laws.

What would change the decision? Technical specifications showing that the device actually belongs to a listed category would require a new scope assessment. If Igor instead starts manufacturing e-readers for placement on the EU market after June 28, 2025, those devices are expressly listed. He would then need to assess the applicable manufacturer duties under Article 7, including product conformity assessment, technical documentation, an EU declaration of conformity and CE marking. His service exemption would not remove those product duties.

So the sequence is: first, what service and product categories are involved and what is my role; then, what are my size figures? Selling other people’s goods does not automatically end the product conversation. For covered products, Articles 9 and 10 set obligations for importers and distributors, including checks of CE marking and required documents appropriate to their role. Manufacturing an unlisted product does not automatically create EAA product duties either. Keep the service conclusion and the product conclusion separate, then check the applicable national law for each unresolved part.

Let’s say you checked and exhaled: the exemption is yours. That’s wonderful news for the budget and a terrible reason to do nothing. The law and the customer are two different authorities, and the second one has never read a directive.

An accessible website is not charity and not just a checkbox for an inspector. It’s an order form with clear labels associated with its fields, rather than relying only on grey placeholder text that disappears when you type. Labels above fields are one useful layout, not a universal WCAG requirement. It’s a button you can reach and operate by keyboard, with visible focus, when a person doesn’t use a mouse. It’s sufficient text contrast that helps people read a price; checking it is more reliable than judging it only on your own phone in sunlight. It’s informative photos with text alternatives that convey their purpose instead of ‘IMG_2841’, while purely decorative images can use empty alt text so assistive technology ignores them. These are practical improvements for customers, including when the service exemption applies.

Why an Inaccessible Website Takes Money Silently

And here’s where the calculation gets personal. A person who cannot fill out your form may leave without writing a letter of explanation, perhaps to try a competitor. In your analytics, that can look like just another incomplete purchase among a hundred others. This is an editorial illustration of a possible loss, not evidence that every abandonment comes from an accessibility barrier. Analytics can record errors or drop-offs, but those signals alone don’t establish why someone left. Use a reproduced problem and customer feedback to investigate the cause before assigning a revenue figure to it.

Practically, this means accessibility is worth keeping not in the folder marked “legal risks” but in the same routine where page load speed and checkout usability live - that is, in the ordinary technical work on your website and shop. That way this topic stops being an event and becomes part of how you maintain your site at all.

A separate word about the rules you’ll meet in search results. WCAG, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, is W3C’s technical standard for web content accessibility. WCAG 2.2 contains testable criteria covering contrast, keyboard operation, field labels and much more. It is useful for specifying and evaluating work, but passing a few checklist items is not WCAG conformance. Its conformance requirements cover full pages and complete processes, including the steps needed to select and buy a product.

W3C’s evaluation overview, updated August 12, 2026, states that no evaluation tool alone can determine whether a site meets accessibility standards; knowledgeable human evaluation is required. That supports a limit on automated testing, not a verdict that every remediation plugin is useless. Our editorial rule is to ask for evidence of what was fixed and tested, rather than treating installation or a one-button promise as proof. Full EAA compliance is a separate assessment: Article 13 and Annex V include service information and continuing conformity duties. Article 15 provides a presumption of conformity for requirements covered by qualifying harmonised standards whose references are published in the EU Official Journal, or by the specified technical specifications. For your assessment, verify which applicable standards currently have a reference published in the EU Official Journal and which requirements that reference covers.

Not with the site. With a sheet of paper where you write down a few lines and come back to them in a year.

1. Staff calculation for the relevant accounting period: record annual work units and who is included, rather than only today’s payroll headcount.
2. Annual turnover and, separately, the balance sheet total for the latest approved accounting period; record the period and any partner or linked enterprise data that must be included. Keep prior-period figures where threshold changes need checking.
3. What you sell and your role: identify the service category, check products against Article 2(1), and distinguish manufacturer, importer and distributor roles. A screen or software alone does not decide product scope.
4. Whether you provide or offer a covered service to consumers in the EU, or place or make covered products available on that market. Record the countries, offers and ordering arrangements, not just completed orders.
5. The check date, the person responsible, the evidence used and unresolved questions about national implementation. Revisit the note with the annual accounts and material business changes.

The first two points support the size assessment; they do not decide the whole exemption by themselves. The third separates service scope from product scope and identifies your role. The fourth checks the EU connection, including offers before a first sale. The fifth gives you a record to revisit when another evening headline with zeros appears. This is our editorial worksheet, not an official exemption certificate. If a category, group relationship or national rule remains unclear, mark that question as open and resolve it before relying on an exemption.

You can also start looking at the site itself while the scope check is underway. For a first manual check, open your checkout page, put the mouse aside and try the path to the payment button using the keyboard. Use Tab and Shift+Tab to move forward and back, Enter or Space to activate controls as appropriate, and arrow keys within controls such as option lists. Check that focus stays visible, the order makes sense and you can leave each control without getting trapped. Stop before making a real payment unless you are deliberately completing a test order. If a step blocks you, record the page, control, browser and steps needed to reproduce it, then send that finding to the person who can fix it.

This is a preliminary check in the spirit of W3C WAI’s Easy Checks, not a simulation of every disabled customer’s experience or a legal compliance test. Passing it can still leave significant barriers. Our practical next step is to fix and retest a reproduced blocker, then arrange a broader evaluation of the complete purchase process, including assistive technology use, when a fuller assessment is needed.

Your first step today: open your payroll records and annual accounts, record the staff calculation, turnover and balance sheet total with their reference period, and note any partner or linked enterprises. Put those figures beside your service or product category and EU offers. Then you can see which parts are supported by evidence and which question needs a national-law check before you spend money or rely on an exemption.