European Accessibility Act - The basics for businesses
Paul Roberts
Aspiring Data Analyst | Interest in human rights, accessibility, trust and safety, privacy, responsible tech and ethics
How accessible is your company website? Can people with disabilities use your digital products and services with minimal barriers? Can they use them at all?
For many companies, these questions have perhaps been low on their list of priorities to answer, if they were ever on the list at all. But things are changing. Regulation is starting to catch up. Which means companies will soon need to be able to answer those questions and answer them well.
Enforcement of The European Accessibility Act (EAA) is on the horizon.
There are around 130 million people in the European Union who live with some form of disability and have to deal with often inaccessible digital goods and services. The European Accessibility Act seeks to rectify this.
The Act will impact the private sector across all EU member states and their provision of products and services including computers and operating systems, audio-visual media services, consumer banking and e-commerce, e-books and publishing, and even some aspects of public transport such as ticketing systems.?
The standards being championed by the Act are there to facilitate accessibility for those with visual, auditory, motor, and cognitive impairments - whether they be permanent, temporary, or situational.
Where does the EAA come from?
The European Accessibility Act is a directive from the European Commission to EU member states, aimed at improving the accessibility of products and services for people with disabilities (and indeed many others as a result, including old people and non-native language speakers). Directives set the standards, leaving it up to member states to translate them into their own national laws, as opposed to a regulation, which would be directly applicable without individual states having to enact new laws.
The EAA aims to standardise accessibility rules across member states, pushing private companies and organisations who provide for people within the European Union towards a unified internal market in terms of access. This in turn further boosts the principles of freedom of movement of people, goods, and services. Greater access for all.
This Act builds on the EU’s Charter of Fundamental Rights, its commitment to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and most recently the EU Web Accessibility Directive which pushed the public sector within the Union to higher levels of digital accessibility. In the UK, this was translated into The Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) Accessibility Regulations 2018, something still in force today.?
How the UK will officially react to the EAA in terms of legislation remains to be seen, given the seemingly constant post-Brexit see-saw of common-sense standards alignment versus threats of ‘red tape cutting’. But if you’re a UK company selling to the EU, these standards will apply to you regardless.?
Following the success of the Web Accessibility Directive, after continued campaign pressure from disability rights groups, and long international negotiations over the details, the European Accessibility Act was adopted in 2019. Many accessibility advocacy groups and voices find the breadth of what the Act covers limited; watered down by the Commission after business interests weighed in.?
The Act concentrates almost exclusively on the digital realm and those devices which support it. For now, accessibility in the built environment isn’t touched much beyond public transport ticketing facilities. And yet, while some wish the Act had gone much further, it still represents a big step towards improved accessibility for those who need it and it will have a noticeably positive impact on their lives. It also means some big changes to business norms.
In terms of the requirements pertained to in the Act, it seems The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and its measurement system for ranking accessibility levels forms the backbone once more, as it did in the Web Accessibility Directive. Whether something is deemed accessible here is founded on four principle assessments; being perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust.?
Think - can a user perceive (visually or audibly) your digital content and interface? Can they navigate their way around it and action what they need to when they need to? Can they understand what you’re telling them and what they’re doing? Can what you’re offering withstand performance on a range of assistive devices??
To ask those questions, you need to know which of your offerings will be affected by the EAA.
What does it affect?
Okay, so let's get into a little more detail. What products and services will the Act affect?
Products
Services
What exactly do you need to change about them??
This is where it gets a little blurry. While the EAA has Annexes of requirement recommendations (Annex 1) and some examples (Annex 2), it is down to the member states and their specific implementation of the Act which will likely offer more precise technical details for you and your company.?
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Personally, I recommend starting by digging into the Act itself and/or bringing in an accessibility expert to help you interpret and provide best practice suggestions to ensure compliance.Then compare with the member state’s national interpretation. I’d also recommend consulting the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines published by the Web Accessibility Initiative of the World Wide Web Consortium.
But in general terms, when it comes to products they should be designed, tested, and produced with an approach of accessibility-by-design. Maximised for unobstructed use by those with disabilities. Alongside the products themselves, things like accompanying information and instructions, even packaging, will also require compliance as the Act covers these too..
In terms of services, beyond making the core functions on your websites and mobile apps accessible, you’ll also need to do things like provide explicit information about the service’s accessibility features and facilities, so people know what’s available. If you’re offering support functions such as help desks or training, accessibility must be borne in mind here too. For example,having a text-based ticketing system (email or online chat) route for the Deaf, deaf, and Hard of Hearing, as opposed to simply a support line to call.
Seeing as how almost every business or organisation operates at least a website available on desktop and mobile, getting it on par with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines looks to be the minimum action for everyone.
Will it apply to you?
Whether you’re in the EU or outside it, if you’re selling or providing these kinds of products to people in the EU then yes, the EAA will apply to you.
Using the UK as an example again - even though the UK government isn’t showing any signs of strict alignment yet, if you’re a UK company providing services in e-commerce or consumer banking then you’ll have to bring your accessibility up to scratch if you want continued access not only to customers with disabilities but the whole market itself. This is the so-called Brussels Effect, which we’ve seen previously with GDPR enforcement. Comply to compete.
Is there any room for exemption?
Some. What are called ‘micro-enterprises’ (those with fewer than 10 employees and under €2 million annual turnover) will not be legally required to comply with the EAA, but they will be encouraged to.This is another sticking point for many rights groups - that micro-enterprises will escape the scope of the Act.
It also appears businesses can apply for specific exemptions regarding certain products or services, however this appears to be fairly limited in the sense that other aspects of compliance to the EAA must still be adhered to. Also,the exemption criteria will fall on the interpretation of what would be a “disproportionate burden” for a business to change, and if a change would “fundamentally alter” the original offering.
Wherever possible, anticipate the automatic need for compliance and seek advice when it comes to undertaking any assessment of what might be exempt.
For all product and service designs currently in the developmental phase, or even just being thought about, incorporating accessibility-by-design into the process of their creation should become your default.
Which brings me to the timeline of things. You may be asking, when is all this coming into effect?
When does the EAA come into force?
The EAA was passed back in 2019. Member states were given until June 2022 to pass their own legislation that would conform to it.
The deadline for member states to begin enforcement of these laws comes into effect in June 2025. From that point on, products and services should be complying when they hit the market.
Those products and services released before June 2025 will be given a grace period for accessibility adaptation up until June 2030. After that, they get the same application of standards and enforcement.
Realistically, some businesses will be tempted to kick this particular can down the road (who remembers the GDPR rush?). The smart ones will be considering the changes they need to make now. Impact assessments, product/service audits, risk assessments, design process modifications, user research and testing. All these things take time and will probably be more complex to implement than they may first appear - the standards go way beyond just adding subtitles to your videos or adjusting the contrast of your website font.?
It makes sense to start planning and working changes in now, at a comfortable pace for designers and developers rather than pushing the panic button at the deadline. That would likely result in a nightmare for those just mentioned.
More importantly, the sooner you evolve your offerings to be more accessible, the sooner those with disabilities will be able to benefit.
Conclusion
There is much, much more to talk about when it comes to this Act and subsequently accessible design.
What does the timeline mean for your business? Will the Act have any teeth? How will member states enforce the Act? What’s the realistic risk to your business for non-compliance? What’s the best strategy to take for optimum compliance? What are the benefits of the Act to you and your customers? What are the technical details of accessible design? What will your designers and developers really have to do?
I’ll be looking at all of these questions in time.
What’s important for now is to keep in mind the vision behind the Act. Creating a far more accessible world to millions of customers who have previously been excluded, and opening up your business to an even bigger market by making positive changes that will likely pay dividends you might never have expected.