For years, whether an online shop worked for disabled customers was left to the shop. In the European Union, that changed on 28 June 2025. From that date, the European Accessibility Act has required a range of everyday products and services to be accessible, and online shopping is one of them.

A lot of what is written about the Act comes from companies selling a product to fix it, and it tends to sound either alarming or vague. This is an attempt at the plain version: what the law says, in its own words where that helps, and what it means for a small store.

This article explains the law in general terms. It isn't legal advice. Each EU country has written the Act into its own national law, so for your specific situation, check with someone who knows the rules where you sell.

What the Act is

The European Accessibility Act is an EU directive, formally Directive (EU) 2019/882. A directive sets the rules, and each member state then writes them into its own law. Countries had until June 2022 to do that, and the rules have applied since 28 June 2025.

The Act covers a specific list of products and services: computers and phones, ATMs and ticket machines, banking, e-books, passenger transport, telephone and TV services, and e-commerce.

Does it apply to your store?

The Act defines e-commerce services as services "provided at a distance, through websites and mobile device-based services by electronic means and at the individual request of a consumer with a view to concluding a consumer contract."

In everyday terms: if people can buy from you online as consumers, your shop is an e-commerce service. The directive also says these obligations apply to the online sale of any product or service, so it does not matter what you sell, whether that is ceramics, clothes or concert tickets.

Two things narrow it down.

It is about consumers. The Act applies to services provided to consumers. A wholesale portal used only by other businesses is a different case.

Microenterprises are exempt. The directive says: "Microenterprises providing services shall be exempt from complying with the accessibility requirements." A microenterprise is one that:

  • employs fewer than 10 people, and
  • has an annual turnover or an annual balance sheet total of no more than €2 million.

Many small online stores fall inside that definition, and for them the Act's requirements do not apply. The exemption is for services, which is what an online shop is; a business that manufactures one of the covered products, such as a phone or an e-reader, is treated differently.

Being exempt is not a reason to ignore accessibility, though. Your customers are the same people either way, a business that grows past ten people loses the exemption, and as an earlier article here notes, one person in six lives with a significant disability.

What it asks a store to do

The requirements for services are written in terms of outcomes rather than code. For websites and apps, the Act asks for them to be made accessible "in a consistent and adequate way by making them perceivable, operable, understandable and robust." Those four words are the four principles of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), the international standard most accessibility work is built on.

For e-commerce specifically, the directive adds three points:

  1. Accessibility information about what you sell. Where the maker of a product provides information about its accessibility, the shop should pass it on.
  2. Accessible identification, security and payment. Logging in, verifying who you are and paying must work for disabled customers too. A checkout someone cannot complete with a screen reader or a keyboard fails here.
  3. Accessible payment and sign-in methods. The payment and identification methods you offer should themselves be perceivable, operable, understandable and robust.

There is also a paperwork side. Service providers have to explain how their service meets the requirements, and the directive says this information belongs in "the general terms and conditions, or equivalent document": a general description of the service in accessible formats, and how the accessibility requirements are met. Many businesses publish this as an accessibility statement and link it from their terms.

Which standard to follow

The Act describes what a site must achieve, and European standards describe how to check it. The one that matters for websites is EN 301 549. Its newest version, V4.1.1, was published in September 2026 and builds on WCAG 2.2, levels A and AA.

Once that standard is cited in the Official Journal of the European Union, meeting it gives a business a presumption that it meets the corresponding requirements of the Act. In practice, if your store meets WCAG 2.2 AA, you are working to the same bar the law points to.

Exceptions worth knowing

A few details in the directive are useful for a store:

  • Older video and documents. The Act does not apply to pre-recorded video, or office documents such as PDFs, published before 28 June 2025. Product videos you add from that date on are covered.
  • Disproportionate burden. The requirements apply only as far as they do not fundamentally change the service or impose a "disproportionate burden". A business that relies on this has to carry out an assessment, write it down and keep it for five years. It is a documented judgement, not a way to opt out.

Who enforces it

Enforcement is national. Each EU country names the authorities that check services and sets its own penalties, so the details differ from country to country. The directive also asks member states to provide guidance and tools for microenterprises, and to make dispute resolution available before a complaint goes to court.

Where to start

If the Act applies to you, or you would rather work to it anyway, the order is much the same as for any accessibility work:

  1. Find out where you stand. Scan the whole store, including product pages, the cart and checkout, not just the home page.
  2. Fix checkout and sign-in first. They are named in the Act, and they are where a problem stops a sale outright.
  3. Fix templates, not single pages. One change to a theme file usually clears a problem across the whole store.
  4. Test with a keyboard and a screen reader. Automated tools find a part of what goes wrong; the rest needs a person to try it.
  5. Write the accessibility statement. Describe what you have done, what is still being worked on, and how customers can reach you if something doesn't work.
  6. Keep a dated record. Note what you found, what you fixed and when. If anyone asks what you have done about accessibility, that record is your answer.

The Act sets a legal floor, and it is a reasonable one: a store that a person can browse, understand and pay for, whatever tools they use to do it.

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