European Accessibility Act and EN 301 549 Explained
Talking about accessibility can be confusing, especially when you consider global perspectives. Certain countries are more advanced than others when it comes to accessibility efforts, and compliance standards vary, for example, in Europe, the U.S. and Canada. This can make it difficult to understand exchanges between compliance professionals in sales, engineering, design, and legal groups.
Since the European Accessibility Act (EAA), passed in 2019, will take effect on June 28, 2025, it’s important that global organizations doing business there clearly understand what will be required. From the June date onward, all companies doing business in the EU must fully comply with the accessibility requirements for products and services that are in scope. Penalties for EAA non compliance will begin to be enforced at that same point.
The EAA also impacts other countries in Europe that are not part of the EU. For example, Switzerland is revising accessibility laws in advance of a January 2027 deadline. Even companies that solely operate inside Switzerland will be forced to comply with accessibility guidelines.
In this blog, I cover a few key points to help reach a common understanding of some accessibility compliance terms as they relate to EAA.
Find out more about accessibility testing at Applause.
What is the European Accessibility Act?
The EAA is a directive meant to improve the functioning of the European market for accessible products and services. It removes barriers created by varying rules in European Member States. It also applies to companies outside of the EU that have products and services in the EU market in the sectors defined by the EAA (see below). Businesses will benefit from:
- common accessibility rules in the EU that will help reduce costs,
- improved cross-border trading,
- more market opportunities for their accessible products and services.
Users will benefit from more accessible products in market, and this will stimulate competition and remove hurdles around accessing transportation, education and work opportunities.
The EAA intends to harmonize the most important products and services for disabled people, many of which currently have different accessibility requirements across EU countries. These products and services include:
- e-commerce websites and native mobile apps,
- computers and operating systems,
- ATMs, ticketing and check-in machines,
- mobile phones,
- TV equipment and related services,
- and more (access the European Accessibility Act page for a full list).
What is EN 301 549, how is it different from EAA and who should care about each?
EN 301 549 V3.2.1 (2021-03) is a European standard that sets requirements for best practices for all users. It is under the umbrella of the EAA directive, but it is not the same thing. It’s similar to what WCAG is to ADA. In simple terms, we say that EN 301 549 is “WCAG plus,” meaning it is literally, by reference, WCAG 2.1 inside EN 301 549, but with additional checkpoints added to it.
It’s important to note that different countries in the EU have different accessibility laws and/or test methodologies that refer to the Web Content Accessibility Guideline (WCAG). For example, in Germany, some organizations wouldn’t know the EN 301 549 standard or WCAG by name. They are familiar with Barrierefreiheitsstärkungsgesetz (BFSG), translated as the Accessibility Strengthening Act. However, this national law harmonizes with EN 301 549 for EAA. This is the case with many others: France (Decree No. 2023-931), Italy (Decree 82/2022), Ireland (S.I. No. 636/2023). The main point here is that all of these individual laws refer to EN 301 549 and are harmonized to it.
At Applause, we believe that three groups should care about EAA and EN 301 549:
- Legal teams for organizations that fall in scope for EAA as EU Member States and multinational firms outside the EU doing business there: Legal organizations inside businesses must work to ensure that their business is EAA compliant. They must understand what EAA means in local countries and what those local laws are. For lawyers, this is a new regulatory framework. They will be required to do certain reporting, so they must understand the regulatory bodies in all countries. They will work with regulators who will evaluate the legitimacy of their accessibility against EN 301 549.
- Product owners: Organizations building websites and apps need to know how requirements will impact their specific products and services. They must ensure that products and services are accessible. Each EU country may have a slightly different set of requirements and penalties. Rather than being focused at the uber level of EAA as an accessibility directive, product and services personnel must focus on the EN 301 549 standard which, as we have previously stated, is WCAG plus additional requirements.
- Customer support teams: Customer support channels are also in scope for EAA, as is product documentation.
What are a few examples of how EN 301 549 extends beyond WCAG 2.1?
Users of eBay upload content, and to do that, they use specific authoring tools. There are checkpoints within EN 301 549 that are specific to authoring tools that we can validate. That isn’t in WCAG. In addition, there are biometric checkpoints and video-related checkpoints, for example, to evaluate captions for accessibility. EN 301 549 is more qualitatively granular about how those captions must be, it’s not just that you must have them for a video. These are additions to checkpoints that affect web products, but EAA has a full section covering hardware. So, previously, with WCAG, we projected its checkpoints onto mobile devices, since WCAG is generally platform agnostic, but with EN 301 549, non-web software (including apps) is explicitly in scope. You have to do these things for mobile, hardware apps, for embedded devices (ATMs etc.). So, if your organization falls in scope for EAA, all of these elements are in scope as well.
How did we arrive at the European Accessibility Act?
The European Accessibility Act is an attempt to harmonize the legislation between Section 508 in the U.S. with the European Union procurement requirements. If you look at Section 508 guidelines, you’ll see a lot of similarities in the language, with a few differences. Section 508 (procurement guidance for working with government agencies) is “WCAG plus” as well, but it also brings in hardware requirements, support requirements and more. As stated before, EN 301 549 used the blueprint from the U.S. work, but with added requirements.
When a client comes to Applause and says they want to be ADA compliant, there’s a slight issue. This is because ADA doesn’t specify web success criteria. So, to become ADA compliant, we suggest organizations conform to WCAG. Europe did something similar. They created EAA with local languages, so to become EAA compliant, they thoughtfully suggest that you use EN 301 549 to do so.
Is EAA more advantageous for U.S. organizations than just complying to WCAG?
Yes.
For multinational businesses in the U.S. – If you conform to EAA standards, you’ll have an advantage. That’s because, once you’ve slightly elevated your accessibility standards to meet EN 301 549, you can take those reusable components and use that in the U.S. For example, if your home screen is the same in the EU and in the U.S. and you make it compliant in the EU, you’re all set back in the U.S. It’s a winning situation for all.
For smaller U.S. companies that don’t work in the EU – You still may want to think about EAA conformance, as you may likely be considering launching your product(s) in Canada. Canada now uses WCAG 2.1/ 2.2 and is also considering requiring international businesses to execute accessibility efforts against EN 301 549. In the U.S. if you’re doing anything with the government or in public university campuses (they have government funding), you must meet section 508 guidelines, which, as we’ve established, is a very similar “WCAG plus” set of standards as well.
Are VPATs relevant to the European Accessibility Act?
That depends who you ask.
Since a VPAT, a Voluntary Product Accessibility Template, is, as it suggests, completely voluntary, no one ever has to use one to comply with a law. However, it is a well-known accessibility conformance report format. In addition, it is never a bad idea to post your VPATs. Beyond simply disclosing the status of your products and services to the public, it sends a message that you are working on accessibility. Beyond the good public image that displays, listing VPATs can help ward off legal issues even when your products are not fully WCAG (or EN 301 549) compliant. Why? Because it is hard for lawyers to serve a demand letter to your firm when you are showing in good faith that you are working towards accessibility. Read more on this in our blog titled How To Avoid ADA Lawsuits and Remediate if You Can’t.
There is a VPAT version for EN 301 549, and since there are conformance requirements that must be reported to local regulators in the EU, having an up-to-date VPAT to refer to simplifies this process. Though specific guidance from local regulators isn’t yet available, as EAA comes fully online this summer, the VPAT lists all the accessibility checkpoints. They map very well to some accessibility declarations in European countries (Italy, for example).
The EAA states that you must have an accurate accessibility declaration that shows whether or not your website and your app supports accessibility, but it’s not very specific about how you must do that declaration. As a result, as some countries do their local implementation of EAA, they have written their declarations to be a broad statement. If you visit one such website in a given country and open up the accessibility declaration page it may say “Our website is mostly accessible, but there are a few things that are not,” (for example, keyboards don’t work on dialogs). Other countries require much more specificity. You have to go to a site, register your organization, fill out a form stating, checkpoint by checkpoint, what is supported. Again, this is where legal teams must take notice.
Need assistance understanding and executing on EAA?
Having a legitimate program with regular checks in place to improve product accessibility is always the best thing that a company can do, no matter where it’s working toward compliance. For EAA, ultimately, the responsibility for EAA compliance comes down to the legal team.
Firms can reduce anxiety around EAA by understanding all the working parts, since as we noted, most of the issues around testing come down to testing against the EN 301 549 standard, which again, is an expansion beyond WCAG.
Applause has over a decade of global experience working with accessibility. From assisting with issues at the strategic level and helping firms instill a culture of accessibility and inclusive design, to implementing organization-wide training and knowledge-sharing processes to highly technical consults and bug reporting, Applause can help.
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