Does the European Accessibility Act Apply to Your Website?

Short answer: the European Accessibility Act is real, it's in force, and the penalties for businesses in scope are serious, up to €100,000 or 4% of annual revenue. But most small local businesses, the plumber, the dental practice, the single-location shop, are likely exempt from the strictest requirements under the small business rule. This isn't legal advice, exact scope depends on your specific business and what your site does, but here's the honest picture so you know what to check.

The European Accessibility Act (EAA) is an EU directive, transposed into Irish law, that requires certain digital products and services to be accessible to people with disabilities. It's not a single flat deadline: the first milestone was 28 June 2025, when newly created digital content and services had to meet the requirements. A second deadline, 28 June 2030, extends that to existing content too, so anything grandfathered in gets a longer runway, but not forever.

Where the EAA applies, the technical standard is WCAG 2.1 at level AA, the same benchmark used internationally for web accessibility. That covers things like colour contrast, keyboard navigation, screen reader compatibility, resizable text and clear page structure. Enforcement is live, and penalties for non-compliance can run up to €100,000 or 4% of annual revenue, whichever is the more serious figure for the business involved.

Here's the reassuring part for most small Irish businesses. The EAA includes a micro-enterprise exemption: if your business has fewer than 10 employees and either an annual turnover or a balance sheet total of €2 million or less, you're exempt from the Act's requirements for the services you provide.

That covers a lot of ground: most sole traders, tradespeople, local shops and small practices. But two things are worth knowing. First, the exemption applies to services, not products, so if you sell a physical product that itself needs to be accessible (a self-service kiosk, for instance), that's a different question. Second, scope isn't only about company size, it also depends on what your website actually does. A straightforward brochure or booking site sits in a different position to, say, an online shop taking payments, which is one of the areas the EAA specifically targets regardless of business size in some cases.

The honest answer is that this needs a proper check for your specific situation, not a blanket assumption either way. If you're unsure, the National Disability Authority publishes guidance, and a solicitor can confirm exactly where your business stands. We're not solicitors and this isn't legal advice, we're simply flagging what the rule says so you know what to ask about.

Compliance aside, here's what WCAG-style accessibility means in practice, and it's a shorter list than people expect:

Most of what's on that list isn't extra work, it's just building the site properly in the first place. Semantic HTML, real headings, labelled forms and decent contrast cost nothing extra when they're part of the build from day one, and they're expensive to retrofit later. They also happen to overlap heavily with what search engines reward: clean structure and clear content are exactly what Google's crawlers and Core Web Vitals checks are looking for too.

There's a real audience argument as well. Roughly one in six people in Ireland report a disability, plus every visitor on a bright phone screen outdoors, or filling in a form on a slow connection, benefits from the same fundamentals. It's a wider net for very little extra cost, which is why every site we build starts with these basics rather than treating them as an add-on.

If you run a small local business, check your specific position rather than assuming either way, the exemption covers a lot of businesses but not every scenario. Whatever the legal answer, a well-structured, accessible site is simply a better one: easier to use, easier to find on Google, and ready either way. Every site we build starts with these fundamentals in. Book a free call if you'd like us to look at where your current site stands.