EAA compliance checker: see what automated testing finds on your site
The European Accessibility Act has applied to online sales in the EU since 28 June 2025. This page explains what the law asks of you, who it covers, what enforcement looks like right now — and gives you a free automated check of one page against WCAG 2.2 Level A/AA, the technical yardstick behind it. We report findings. We do not issue compliance verdicts: no vendor can.
Scan one page free
Give us a URL and a work email. You get a plain-English PDF: every barrier automated testing can detect on that page, each one photographed on your own site, with what it costs to put right.
One page, no account, no card. Full-site scan (up to 150 pages): $49 — see pricing.
What the EAA is
The European Accessibility Act is Directive (EU) 2019/882. Being a directive, it does not apply to you directly: each of the 27 member states has written it into its own national law, with its own regulator and its own penalty scale. That is why the numbers below differ so widely from country to country.
What the law requires in practice is that consumer-facing digital services be usable by people with disabilities. Europe does not cite WCAG directly — it cites the European standard EN 301 549, which contains WCAG plus extra requirements for hardware, documentation and support channels.
| Current harmonised version | EN 301 549 v3.2.1, which embeds WCAG 2.1 Level AA for web content |
|---|---|
| Next version | v4.1.1, embedding WCAG 2.2 Level AA. The draft was published in November 2025; citation in the EU Official Journal is expected around October 2026 |
| What we test against | WCAG 2.2 A/AA. Version 2.2 is a superset of 2.1 — no criterion was made weaker — so testing 2.2 covers today's standard and the one replacing it |
Who it applies to
- Anyone selling in-scope services to EU consumers, wherever the company itself sits. A US or UK shop shipping to France is in scope.
- In-scope services include e-commerce, consumer banking, e-books, transport booking, telecoms and access to audiovisual media.
- Microenterprises are exempt — service providers with fewer than 10 employees and no more than €2M turnover. (Manufacturers of in-scope products get no such exemption.)
The practical consequence: the businesses that actually have to act, and that no enterprise vendor is going to call, are roughly 10 to 250 employees. That is who we built this for.
The dates
| Date | What happens |
|---|---|
| 28 June 2025 | In force. New products and services placed on the market must meet the requirements. |
| 2025–2026 | Enforcement ramp: consumer complaints, regulator warning letters, the first lawsuits. |
| 28 June 2030 | Backstop. Everything in scope must comply, including services that predate 2025. |
"We're an established shop, so we have until 2030" is mostly wrong. A service that is redesigned or substantially changed counts as newly provided, and a consumer complaint can put a regulator in your inbox long before 2030.
What actually happens if you ignore it
Here is the honest picture, and it is deliberately less dramatic than the version you will read on vendor sites that want to frighten you into a subscription.
- Enforcement is complaint-driven first. In most member states the sequence is: a consumer complains to the national regulator, the regulator asks you questions, then issues a warning or an order to fix. Penalties sit at the end of that process, not the start.
- France: the first EAA lawsuits were filed in November 2025 against Auchan, Carrefour, E.Leclerc and Picard. They were still pending as of our last check in 2026 — no ruling, and no fine imposed.
- Netherlands: the regulator (ACM) announced active enforcement for the second half of 2026.
- Everywhere else: transposition is complete in all 27 member states; most regulators are in complaint-and-warning-letter mode.
- No EAA fine has verifiably been collected anywhere as far as we can establish. We would rather tell you that than sell you a scan on a number we made up.
- Beyond money: regulators can order a service withdrawn from the market and can publicly name businesses that do not act. For a consumer brand that is usually the more expensive outcome.
Maximum penalties by country
These are statutory maximums written into national law, per country. They are not an estimate of what any particular business would pay, and they are drawn from secondary sources — check the national law text before relying on a figure in a contract or a board paper.
| Country | Maximum penalty |
|---|---|
| Hungary | up to €1,260,000 |
| Spain | up to €1,000,000 |
| Netherlands / Sweden | up to approximately €900,000 |
| France | up to €250,000 aggregate (base €7,500 per offence for companies, doubled on repeat; plus up to €25,000 a year for a missing accessibility statement) |
| Germany | up to €100,000 per violation (plus up to €10,000 for false accessibility information) |
| Ireland | up to €60,000 and/or 18 months imprisonment |
| Italy | up to 5% of annual turnover |
Not legal advice. Whether your business is in scope, and whether any given page meets the law, is a legal judgement for you and your advisers. We provide test results and evidence; we do not provide legal opinions and we do not certify anything.
What our check does
- We load your page in a real browser — so JavaScript storefronts are tested as your customers see them, not as static HTML.
- We run axe-core, the industry-standard rules engine, against WCAG 2.2 Level A and AA.
- Every finding comes back in plain English with the offending element boxed in a screenshot of your own page, the WCAG criterion it maps to, who it locks out, and a fix sketch.
- If you want the findings fixed, our own developers do the work at a fixed price and re-scan to verify. How it works · what it costs.
What a scan can and cannot prove
Automated coverage notice: this report was produced by automated testing (axe-core engine). Automated tools find only part of all accessibility barriers — independent studies measure roughly 30–57% of issues, depending on the site. A clean automated result is not proof of accessibility, and this report does not certify compliance with the EAA, EN 301 549, or WCAG. Full coverage requires a human expert audit, which we offer as a separate service.
The long version, with the studies and worked examples: what automated testing actually finds.
Keep reading
- What automated testing finds — and what it misses: the coverage studies, and nine real failures our own scanner cannot see.
- The alternative to an accessibility overlay: the FTC's $1,000,000 order against accessiBe, and why we will never sell you a widget.
- How BarriScan works, step by step — including what we refuse to do.
- Pricing: free scan, $49 full-site scan, fixed-price remediation bands.