Does the European Accessibility Act apply to you? Five questions, each with the article it rests on.

The Act's service requirements do not apply to you.

The Act covers services provided to consumers, and a consumer is a natural person acting outside their trade, business, craft or profession (Article 3(22)). A business that sells only to other businesses is not providing a service to consumers.

Two things still hold. If you place a listed product on the EU market, the product requirements apply regardless of who buys it. And other laws reach business-to-business websites: in Britain the Equality Act's duty on service providers has no consumer test.

The Act does not apply to you.

The Act reaches products placed on the Union market and services offered to consumers in the Union (Articles 2 and 3(4)). A business with no customers in the EU is outside it. The moment you offer to consumers in the EU, come back to the first question.

If you sell in the United States or the United Kingdom, the pages on the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Equality Act describe what applies there.

The Act does not apply to what you offer.

Only the products and services listed in Article 2 are covered. A service that is not on the list, a company's information website with no consumer contract concluded through it for instance, is outside the Act.

The list has an edge worth checking: a website through which a consumer can buy is an e-commerce service under Article 3(30), whatever else the business does. If yours takes orders from consumers, it is on the list.

The Act applies to your product, whatever your size.

A listed product placed on the EU market after 28 June 2025 must meet the requirements of Annex I Section I and II, carry the EU declaration of conformity and the CE marking (Articles 7, 16 to 18), and is subject to market surveillance (Article 19).

The microenterprise exemption in Article 4(5) is for services only. A microenterprise dealing with products is spared some paperwork under Article 14(4) and 14(8), and nothing else.

The Act's service requirements do not apply to you.

A microenterprise providing services is exempt from the accessibility requirements and from the obligations that go with them (Article 4(5)). A microenterprise employs fewer than ten people and has an annual turnover of two million euros or less, or an annual balance sheet total of two million euros or less (Article 3(23)).

The exemption is by size at a moment in time. A business that grows past either limit comes into the Act. Member states are asked to give microenterprises guidance and tools (Article 4(6)), and the Act's recitals encourage voluntary compliance. If you sell in Britain, the Equality Act still applies to you as a service provider, with no size test.

The Act applies to you. Some of what you use has a transitional period.

Your service is in scope. Products lawfully used to provide the service before 28 June 2025 may continue in use until 28 June 2030, and a service contract agreed before that date may run unaltered until it expires, for no more than five years (Article 32(1)). A self-service terminal in use before that date may be kept to the end of its economic life, up to twenty years, where the member state allows it (Article 32(2)).

A website is not a product lawfully in use before the date; it is the service itself. The transitional period covers the equipment and contracts behind the service, not the site a consumer uses. For the site, go on to the last question.

Go on to the last question

The Act applies to you, and a requirement may lift to the extent you can show why.

A requirement does not apply to the extent that meeting it would fundamentally alter the basic nature of the service, or would be a disproportionate burden judged against the criteria in Annex VI: the cost against the business's resources, the cost against the benefit to disabled people, and the size and nature of the business (Article 14(1) and 14(2)).

The judgement must be yours in writing. The assessment is documented and kept for five years, renewed when the service changes and at least every five years, and given to an authority on request (Article 14(3) and 14(5)). It cannot be claimed where the business took outside funding to improve accessibility (Article 14(6)). Every other requirement still applies in full.

The Act applies to you in full.

Your service must meet the requirements of Annex I, Sections III and IV (Article 4(3)). For a website that means being perceivable, operable, understandable and robust, and for an online shop also making sign-in, security and payment accessible and passing on accessibility information about the products sold.

You must explain how the service meets the requirements, in your general terms and conditions or an equivalent document, keep that explanation while the service runs, and give an authority all information necessary to demonstrate conformity on a reasoned request (Article 13(2), 13(5), Annex V). If the service does not conform you must correct it and tell the authorities of each member state where you provide it (Article 13(4)). Penalties are set by each member state (Article 30); the page on the Act gives three examples.