The EU Accessibility Act in Finland for Online Shops

If you sell to customers in Finland, the European Accessibility Act governs how your online shop has to work. The measure is Directive (EU) 2019/882, and its rules have applied across the European Union since 28 June 2025. Because it is a Directive rather than a Regulation, it has to be written into each country’s own law, so in Finland the substance reaches you through Finnish legislation and is overseen by a Finnish authority. This guide sets out the parts of the Accessibility Act that matter most to an ordinary online shop selling into Finland.

The core idea is straightforward. Consumer-facing e-commerce should be usable by people with disabilities, including customers who rely on a keyboard, a screen reader or adequate colour contrast to read the page.

What the Act asks of an online shop

For most online shops the standard to meet is EN 301 549, which for websites points to WCAG 2.1 at level AA. Behind the technical label is a short list of practical points that a customer with a disability actually notices.

• Text and background should have enough contrast to be read easily — a ratio of at least 4.5:1 for normal text.
• The whole shop, including the checkout, should work with a keyboard alone, without a mouse.
• Checkout form fields should carry proper labels, so a screen reader can tell the customer what each box is for.
• Images that carry meaning should have alt text describing them.

Our complete accessibility guide goes through these requirements in more depth and shows how they map onto a typical storefront.

The microenterprise exemption

The Act does not weigh on every business equally. A microenterprise that provides services — and running an online shop counts as a service — is exempt from the service obligations. A microenterprise here means a business with fewer than ten people and an annual turnover or balance-sheet total of no more than two million euro. Meet both thresholds and the service duties do not bind you.

Two caveats matter. The exemption covers services, so a business that also manufactures certain products may still face the product rules. And accessibility stays worth doing even when it is not required — an accessible shop is easier for every customer to use, which usually helps sales as well as compliance.

The Finnish layer

Because the Accessibility Act is transposed into national law, the enforcement in Finland is Finnish. The requirements reach you through Finland’s own transposing legislation, and a designated Finnish authority supervises them in the Finnish market. Our Finland country hub covers more on selling into this market.

Language is the other local point, and Finland has two national languages. Consumers there expect consumer-facing information in Finnish and, where relevant, Swedish, so the accessibility features that involve text — labels, error messages, alt text, the wording at checkout — should read clearly in the language your customers use. A carefully labelled form is no help to a customer who cannot read the label.

What Finnish-facing shops can do now

Meeting the Accessibility Act is mostly a matter of steady, practical improvement rather than a single large project. A short review will usually show where to begin.

• Check your colour contrast, particularly on buttons, links and the checkout.
• Try to complete a purchase using only the keyboard, and fix anything you cannot reach.
• Make sure every checkout field is labelled and every meaningful image has alt text.
• Confirm whether the microenterprise thresholds apply to you before assuming either way.

National transposition and enforcement practice can develop over time, so treat the local detail as something to revisit rather than settle once. For the full picture, see our complete accessibility guide.

This guide is educational, not legal advice.