The EU Accessibility Act in Luxembourg for Online Shops
Accessibility (EAA)If you sell to customers in Luxembourg, the European Accessibility Act shapes how your shop has to work for people with disabilities. The measure is Directive (EU) 2019/882, and it has applied across the European Union since 28 June 2025. Because it is a Directive rather than a Regulation, it reaches you through Luxembourg’s own national transposition and is overseen by a Luxembourg authority. This guide sets out the parts of the Act that matter most to an ordinary online shop selling into Luxembourg.
The Act’s purpose is straightforward. A consumer-facing e-commerce service should be usable by people with a range of disabilities, so that someone using a screen reader, navigating by keyboard or relying on strong colour contrast can browse, choose and pay without being shut out.
What the Act asks of an online shop
The Act sets accessibility requirements for a defined list of products and services, and consumer e-commerce is one of the services within its scope. The technical benchmark that shops work to is the harmonised European standard EN 301 549, which draws on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, WCAG 2.1, at level AA. Meeting that benchmark is what “accessible” means for most online shops.
- Text and background should meet a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for ordinary text.
- The whole buying journey, including the checkout, should work with a keyboard alone, without a mouse.
- Form fields at checkout should be clearly labelled so assistive technology can announce their purpose.
- Images that carry meaning, including product photos, should have descriptive alternative text.
Our complete accessibility guide works through these requirements in more detail and shows how they map onto a typical shop.
The microenterprise exemption
The Act does not weigh on every business equally. Microenterprises that provide services are exempt from its service obligations. A microenterprise here means a business with fewer than ten staff and either an annual turnover or a balance-sheet total of no more than two million euros. A very small shop selling into Luxembourg may therefore sit outside the service requirements.
The exemption still deserves care. A shop that grows can cross the threshold, and accessibility work tends to benefit every customer, not only those the law has in mind. An accessible checkout is rarely effort wasted.
The Luxembourg layer
Because the Act is a Directive, Luxembourg has written it into its own national legislation, and enforcement is carried out by Luxembourg authorities. The accessibility requirements themselves are common across the EU, but the supervising body, the complaints route and the way penalties are set are national. Our Luxembourg country hub covers more on selling into this market.
Language is a distinctive local point. Luxembourg is multilingual, with French, German and Luxembourgish all in everyday use. The safe course is to make sure the accessible presentation of your shop — labels, error messages, alternative text and the like — reads clearly in the languages your Luxembourg customers actually use, so an accessible interface is also an understandable one.
What Luxembourg-facing shops can do now
Preparing is mostly a structured review rather than a rebuild. A short checklist will usually show where the gaps are.
- Check colour contrast across your theme, buttons and text.
- Try to complete a purchase using only the keyboard, and fix anything that traps or blocks you.
- Make sure every checkout field has a proper, programmatic label.
- Add alternative text to product images and other meaningful graphics.
- Confirm whether the microenterprise exemption applies to you before relying on it.
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.