The European Accessibility Act and online stores

The Act says your site and app themselves need to be accessible. If a maker gives you accessibility information about a product, you pass it on. The Act also sets three duties:

1. You explain how your store meets the Act’s requirements, in your terms and conditions, or a page like them. You keep it up, where anyone can find it, and in a form people can read or hear.
2. You keep your store accessible as it changes, and as the standards change. As a habit, not once.
3. When your store falls short, you put it right. You also tell the authorities straight away in each EU country where you sell.

Checkout counts too. A shopper using a keyboard, a screen reader or zoom needs to be able to sign in, prove who they are, sign electronically and pay.

So who does what? If you work with us, we find and fix problems in your theme’s own code. You and your lawyer handle the information in your terms and conditions, and any notice to the authorities.

Aim for WCAG 2.2 Level AA. That’s what we work to, and here’s why.

The Act doesn’t name a technical standard. Instead, once the EU puts a standard on its official list, a store that meets that standard is taken as meeting the Act.

The one to watch is EN 301 549, the European standard for accessible technology. For websites, it uses WCAG. The standards body ETSI published version 4.1.1 in September 2026. It’s the first version written for the Act. Its web rules follow WCAG 2.2 Level AA.

We last checked on October 18, 2026, and the new version wasn’t on the EU’s list yet. AccessibleEU said in September 2026 that until it is, the earlier version, 3.2.1, is the one that counts.

So which do you follow? Either way, the same answer. The record we keep for your store tracks both versions, so it already follows whichever one the EU goes by.

Each EU country names its own authorities to check services, follow up complaints and see that problems get put right. It also sets its own penalties, which the Act says must be “effective, proportionate and dissuasive”: real enough to make a store act. Shoppers, and groups with a genuine stake, can take a store to court too, under their country’s law.

• Sweden: By March 2026, the regulator PTS had opened 28 reviews of online stores. It started with larger retailers based there, and only their websites, not apps.
• Netherlands: In March 2026, the regulator ACM tested about 100 of the largest online stores there. On 61% of them, someone using assistive technology couldn’t place an order. Another 33% had serious problems.
• France: In May 2026, a court in Lille didn’t order a retailer to change anything, after a fast-track hearing. The judge said a French size threshold still applied. It covers only companies with more than €250 million in average sales in France. This retailer’s sales in France were below that. Disability groups in the case say they’ve appealed.
• France: In June 2026, a court in Caen ordered another retailer to make its online store accessible, with a fine for every day it doesn’t. That judge said an online store can’t be only partly accessible.
• Germany: Since June 2026, shoppers can report problems with an online store on the website of Germany’s watchdog for the Act.

So far, these cases and reviews have all been about large retailers.

The Act doesn’t say what counts as offering a service to shoppers in the EU. Prices in euros? Shipping to the EU? They’re fair things to wonder about, and the Act leaves them open. If EU shoppers are a big part of your sales, ask a lawyer in the EU how the Act treats a store like yours.