Frequently asked questions on the European Accessibility Act

The European Accessibility Act is a European Directive (formally known as Directive (EU) 2019/882) that applies to many products and services¹. It aims to make these products and services more accessible to persons with disabilities. Products and services that must be compliant with EAA include B2C (Business to Consumer) and e-commerce websites. At the moment, it does not apply to B2B (Business-to-Business) e-commerce sites.

It comes into effect from 28 June 2025.

Read our Information sheet: European Accessibility Act for more information.

The European Accessibility Act comes into effect from 28th June 2025.

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) is a technical standard that defines how to make website content more accessible to persons with disabilities.² Typically, it covers both the content (text, image and/or sound) and structure (markup and/or code) of the website. WCAG covers four key principles³:

• Perceivable - information must be visible to the user’s senses

• Operable - the user must be able to use the interface

• Understandable - the user must be able to understand both the information and the operation of the user interface

• Robust - the user interface and content contained on the website must continue to be accessible as advances are made in assistive technologies

Each principle has an associated set of testable success criteria. If the success criteria are met for each principle, a product or service is said to conform to WCAG.

Therefore, a website’s accessibility is improved by meeting WCAG’s success criteria in each of the four key principles listed.

The European Accessibility Act aims to make mandated products and services more accessible to persons with disabilities. Products and services that must comply with EAA include B2C (Business to Consumer) and e-commerce websites. At the moment, it does not apply to B2B (Business-to-Business) e-commerce sites.

Depending on your WebShop implementation, it may apply to your WebShop.

We have focused on efforts to make our WebShop more accessible for persons with disabilities (whether that disability is visual, auditory, physical, cognitive, or neurological). The changes we have made mean that our WebShop can be used with assistive technology. We are actively working on making the Digital Commerce platform and our latest WebShop template (known as Forta) compliant with the European Accessibility Act. To achieve this, we have made modifications that we can validate against the success criteria for each WCAG principle. Accessibility to our WebShop has been improved due to this validation process.

More specifically, we have made improvements in the following areas:

• Updated our design principles so that all new features would be accessible by design, which means that Digital Commerce WebShop will continue to meet the WCAG principle of robustness.

• Better keyboard navigation, including fixing tab order and hover interactions on popups and menus.

• Interactive elements are perceivable to both humans and assistive technologies.

• Improving alt-text and aria labelling in our standard WebShop template.

• Adding functionality to the Management Interface so you can update your content to comply with the European Accessibility Act.

These improvements are being rolled out incrementally. For the latest information, check our monthly release notes.

The changes made are on our standard WebShop template. We have extensively tested all changes to maintain visual design and layout as much as possible.

In many cases, we’ve changed an element's behaviour to improve its usability and accessibility without impacting its appearance.

It is your responsibility to be compliant with the EAA.

We support your compliance efforts by sharing information and tools regarding EAA, and through improvements we have made and continue to make to our platform and WebShop templating system.

Read our Responsibility matrix: European Accessibility Act for a detailed look at who is responsible for what.

We recommend that you check compliance with the European Accessibility Act using the following tools:

• Axe-core

• WAVE - Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools

• Lighthouse

You may need to take some time to understand and investigate the results you obtain, since these tools may have false positives (an element of your WebShop is accessible when it is not) and/or false negatives (an element of your WebShop is not accessible when it actually is).

If you have further questions after reading Information on the European Accessibility Act, this FAQ, and the Responsibility matrix on the European Accessibility Act, don't hesitate to contact our Support Team, who will advise you.

If you have customized the standard WebShop template, you must verify compliance with the EAA.

We recommend that you:

• Use semantic headings with a logical structure (so Heading 1 <h1>, then Heading 2 <h2>, then Heading 3 <h3>, and so on)

• Include alt text or aria-labels for all images

• Do not use images as buttons unless they are appropriately labelled

• Use descriptive text for any links that you create. (For example, use “Read more about our new product” instead of “Click here”).