"Isn't That an EU Problem?"
A U.S.-based ecommerce brand has spent two years steadily growing a base of European customers — good margins, loyal repeat buyers, no reason to slow down. When EU accessibility law comes up in a planning meeting, the general assumption in the room is that it's "someone else's problem" — a European regulation for European companies. Then the brand's EU legal counsel points out, flatly, that the compliance deadline already passed months ago, and that the business has been in scope the entire time.
This mistake is common, and it's an understandable one — EU regulations often get filed mentally under "not us" by companies headquartered elsewhere. The European Accessibility Act doesn't work that way. It's tied to where your customers are, not where your company is registered.
What the EAA Actually Is, and When It Applies
The European Accessibility Act (EAA) is EU Directive (EU) 2019/882. Like most EU directives, it required member states to transpose it into their own national law — that transposition deadline was June 28, 2022. But the substantive obligations that businesses actually have to meet became legally applicable starting June 28, 2025. That date has already passed as of this writing, which means any business in scope should already be compliant, not planning to be compliant eventually.
The EAA is broader than a single "make your website accessible" law. It covers a defined list of products and services, including:
- Computers and operating systems
- Smartphones and other consumer ICT devices
- ATMs, ticketing machines, and check-in machines
- E-books and e-readers
- E-commerce
- Banking services
- Electronic communications (messaging, calling services)
- Audiovisual media services, in certain respects
The common thread is that these are products and services offered to consumers within the EU — which is the detail that catches non-EU businesses off guard.
Why "We're Not an EU Company" Doesn't Exempt You
Ecommerce is explicitly and directly in scope. Any business selling to consumers within the EU through an online store generally needs to meet the EAA's accessibility requirements for that store's website — and any related mobile app — regardless of where the business itself is headquartered. The trigger is the location of the consumer being sold to, not the location of company registration, incorporation, or servers.
This is exactly the mechanism that put the ecommerce brand in the opening scenario in scope without anyone on the team clocking it. A U.S. company with EU customers is not outside the EAA's reach simply by virtue of being American. If you're selling into the EU consumer market, you're playing by EU consumer-facing rules for that part of your business.
The Technical Standard: EN 301 549
EAA compliance isn't measured against some brand-new, EU-specific accessibility checklist invented from scratch. The technical standard underpinning it is EN 301 549, the EU's harmonized accessibility standard for ICT. Its web-content requirements are built directly on WCAG, and for practical purposes, meeting WCAG 2.1 Level AA covers the great majority of EN 301 549's web-relevant requirements.
This is genuinely good news for any organization that has already done real WCAG AA work for other reasons — U.S. ADA risk, general product quality, or an earlier Section 508 requirement. That work isn't wasted or redundant when the EAA enters the picture; it's the substantial majority of what EN 301 549 asks for.
The Microenterprise Exemption
The EAA includes a specific carve-out for very small businesses. "Microenterprises" — generally defined as businesses with fewer than 10 employees and either annual turnover or a balance sheet total under roughly €2 million — are exempt from the EAA's service-related obligations.
Two caveats matter here. First, this is a narrow, specific definition, not a loose "small business" concept — it's worth confirming your actual headcount and financials against the definition rather than assuming you qualify. Second, this exemption does not extend to manufacturers or importers of covered products in the same blanket way it applies to services — a small hardware manufacturer doesn't get the same pass a small service provider does. If there's any ambiguity about which category your business falls into, that's worth resolving with actual legal counsel rather than assumption.
Enforcement Varies by Country
Unlike the technical standard, which is EU-wide and consistent, enforcement mechanisms and specific penalty structures are set at the national level by each individual EU member state, rather than uniformly by the EU itself. That means the exact consequences of non-compliance — fine amounts, market-withdrawal powers, which body handles complaints — differ from country to country. The underlying accessibility obligation is EU-wide and consistent; the consequences for failing to meet it are not, and depend on which member states your business actually serves.
This decentralized enforcement model is worth understanding for planning purposes rather than treating as a reason to deprioritize compliance in lower-enforcement countries. A business selling across multiple EU member states doesn't get to pick which country's rules apply to which customer — the obligation follows the consumer's location, not the enforcement intensity of that particular national authority. Assuming one country's market surveillance body is unlikely to act is a weak basis for a compliance strategy, especially since enforcement priorities and resourcing can and do shift over time as national authorities build out their EAA-specific processes.
Documenting Your Position
Given that enforcement varies and the technical bar overlaps heavily with WCAG, the most defensible position for an in-scope business is the same one that applies under most accessibility regulations: real, documented evidence of conformance work, not just an internal belief that "we're probably fine." That means an actual audit against WCAG 2.1 AA (or EN 301 549 directly, for organizations that prefer working from the EU standard itself), a dated record of what was tested and what was found, and a remediation plan for anything that isn't yet compliant. If a national market surveillance authority or an EU customer's procurement team ever asks for evidence of EAA readiness, "we did a real audit on this date and here's what it found" is a fundamentally stronger position than an assumption that was never actually tested.
The Practical Path: One Standard, Not Two
If your organization is already targeting WCAG 2.1 or 2.2 AA for U.S. ADA reasons, the most efficient path forward is not to treat "U.S. compliance" and "EU compliance" as two separate projects with two separate technical targets. Because EN 301 549's web requirements are built on WCAG, and WCAG 2.1 AA covers the large majority of that standard, a single, well-executed WCAG AA conformance effort serves both audiences at once. The remediation work — keyboard access, contrast, labeling, focus management, real alt text — doesn't change meaningfully based on which regulation is driving the requirement. What changes is which specific legal or procurement document you're able to point to afterward as evidence.
Get Ahead of the Deadline That Already Passed
If your business sells to EU consumers and hasn't formally assessed EAA scope, the deadline for that assessment isn't upcoming — it's already behind you as of June 2025. That doesn't mean panic is the right response; it means the right next step is finding out, concretely, where your actual gaps against WCAG 2.1 AA (and by extension EN 301 549) sit, rather than continuing to assume the regulation doesn't apply.
If you're not sure whether your business is in scope of the EAA, or where a real WCAG AA gap analysis would land you, talk to us before an EU customer, partner, or regulator raises the question first.