European Accessibility Act (EAA)

The European Accessibility Act (EAA) is Directive (EU) 2019/882. It requires a range of products and services — including e-commerce services — to be accessible to persons with disabilities. The obligations apply from 28 June 2025. For online shops that means the website your customers use to browse, buy and pay must work for people who rely on assistive technology such as screen readers, keyboard-only navigation or high-contrast display.

Who and what the EAA covers

The Directive lists specific products (for example computers, payment terminals, e-readers and ticketing machines) and services. The service most relevant to merchants is e-commerce, defined broadly as the sale of goods or services to consumers through a website or mobile application. If you run a consumer-facing online shop trading into the EU, you are in scope unless a specific exemption applies.

The EAA is aimed at business-to-consumer selling. A shop that trades only with other businesses, or a purely internal tool, is a different case. The safe assumption for a normal PrestaShop store selling to the public is that accessibility obligations apply to you.

The technical benchmark: EN 301 549 and WCAG 2.1 AA

The EAA sets functional accessibility requirements — content must be perceivable, operable, understandable and robust — but it does not spell out every technical detail. Conformity is judged against the harmonised European standard EN 301 549, which in turn references the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 at level AA. In practice, meeting WCAG 2.1 AA is the working target for an accessible online shop.

WCAG 2.1 AA translates into concrete, testable things: sufficient colour contrast, text alternatives for images, forms with proper labels, content that works with a keyboard alone, visible focus indicators, and a checkout that a screen-reader user can complete unaided.

The microenterprise exemption

Microenterprises that provide services are exempt from the service obligations. A microenterprise is a business with fewer than 10 staff and an annual turnover or balance-sheet total of €2 million or less. Because e-commerce is a service, a genuinely micro online shop is not bound by the EAA’s e-commerce accessibility duties.

Two cautions. First, both the headcount and the financial threshold matter — check your own numbers carefully and keep evidence. Second, the exemption covers service obligations; it does not make accessibility a bad idea. Accessible sites reach more customers and reduce legal and reputational risk if your business grows past the threshold.

What an online shop must actually do

• Provide sufficient colour contrast between text and background.
• Make the whole site keyboard-navigable, with a logical tab order and no keyboard traps.
• Add meaningful text alternatives (alt text) for product images and informative graphics.
• Give every form field a clear, programmatically associated label, and surface validation errors accessibly.
• Ensure an accessible checkout that can be completed without a mouse and without sighted assistance.
• Show a visible focus state so keyboard users can see where they are.
• Publish an accessibility statement describing how your service meets the requirements and how users can report problems.

Enforcement and risk

The EAA is enforced by national market-surveillance authorities in each EU member state. They can investigate complaints, require corrective action and, where a business does not fix an inaccessible service, apply penalties set under national law. Consumers and representative organisations can also raise complaints. The practical exposure for merchants is a mix of enforcement action, remediation cost under time pressure and lost sales from customers who cannot use the site.

For a step-by-step walkthrough, see our complete accessibility guide, and read the FAQ on who must comply. You can also review the related AI Act transparency rules if your shop uses chatbots or AI-generated content.