Does the European Accessibility Act Apply to Your US Website?

Most American businesses have never heard of the European Accessibility Act, and a good number of them are in scope. It is one of several bodies of law that can reach a US website without being American; the rest are sorted by who they bind in website legal requirements.

It works the way GDPR does: obligations follow your customers rather than your incorporation. If you sell to consumers in the EU, being a US company does not place you outside it. And unlike the ADA, this one is an actual regulation with an actual date, which passed on 28 June 2025.

What it is

The EAA is an EU directive setting accessibility requirements for certain products and services sold to consumers in the EU. As a directive it does not apply directly — each member state transposes it into national law — which matters practically, because enforcement, penalties and procedure are set at national level and differ across the 27.

It has applied since 28 June 2025.

Whether it applies to you

Three questions, in order.

Do you offer a covered service to consumers in the EU? The covered categories include e-commerce, consumer banking, e-books, electronic communications, access to audiovisual media services, and various transport services. E-commerce is the one that catches most US businesses: if consumers in the EU can buy from your website, you are likely offering a covered service.

Are you targeting the EU market, or merely reachable from it? This is the genuine judgement call, and the answer is not crisply defined. Actively selling into the EU — pricing in euros, shipping there, EU-language versions, EU-targeted marketing, an EU establishment — points strongly towards being in scope. A purely domestic US site that a European can technically load is a much weaker case. If you are between the two, that is a question for counsel rather than for a checklist.

Are you a microenterprise? There is an exemption for microenterprises providing services, defined by both headcount and financial thresholds — fewer than 10 employees and turnover or balance sheet under the stated ceiling. Note that it requires meeting both limbs, and note that the exemption for service providers is not mirrored identically for products.

What it requires

Conformance is assessed against the European standard EN 301 549, the EU's accessibility standard for ICT. For websites and mobile applications, its web requirements align with WCAG Level AA.

This is convenient for anyone who has already done accessibility work: the technical target is broadly the same one your US obligations point at. If you conform to WCAG 2.2 AA you are in good shape on the web portion, though EN 301 549 is a wider document covering more than web content and you should not assume web conformance discharges everything in it.

Beyond the technical standard, the EAA also expects documentation — information about how the service meets the requirements, provided in an accessible format. Practically, that means an accessibility statement with substance rather than a paragraph of reassurance. Our guide to what changed in WCAG 2.2 covers the technical delta if you were last audited against 2.1.

Enforcement, and what it costs

Because enforcement is national, there is no single penalty figure. Reported maximums across member states vary widely — several hundred thousand euros in some, and in others a percentage of annual turnover for serious breaches. Some states run complaint-driven enforcement, others proactive market surveillance.

Activity has been building rather than arriving all at once. The first EAA litigation was filed in France in late 2025, and information requests and enforcement actions have been increasing through 2026 across several member states. The realistic near-term risk for a mid-sized US business is a complaint or an information request rather than a headline fine, but that is still a process you would rather not be in unprepared.

There is also a transitional provision allowing certain service providers until 28 June 2030 to bring some legacy arrangements into line. Read it narrowly. It is not a general five-year extension, and it does not cover new services.

How this sits alongside your US obligations

For most organizations the EAA does not add a separate engineering programme. It adds a jurisdiction.

The technical work — conform to WCAG AA, test manually, remediate documents, keep the CMS from reintroducing defects — is the same work you would do for the ADA, Section 508, the DOJ Title II rule or the HHS rule. What differs is who can act on it, what evidence you must publish, and which standard you name in writing. Our post on which standard actually binds you lays that out by organization type.

The practical exception is documentation. US law does not generally require you to publish a conformance statement; the EAA expects information about accessibility to be available. If you are in scope, an accessibility statement stops being optional good practice.

What to do

Establish whether you are targeting the EU market, and record the reasoning. That single determination decides everything else, and it should be made deliberately rather than assumed either way.

If you are in scope, audit against WCAG 2.2 AA with manual testing, remediate, and publish an accessibility statement describing your conformance and how to contact you about a barrier. If you are near the microenterprise threshold, get the calculation checked, because both limbs matter and the ceilings are specific.

If you are not in scope today but plan to sell into the EU, treat this as a market-entry requirement rather than a compliance afterthought. It is far cheaper to build accessibly than to remediate a site you have already launched into a market that requires it.

Start with an accessibility audit. If a rebuild is on the table, the accessibility requirements guide shows how to write the standard into the procurement document so a supplier is contractually bound to it.

This article describes an EU directive in general terms and is not legal advice. Because implementation, penalties and enforcement are national, advice on the member states you actually sell into is worth getting if you are near any of the boundaries above.