The EAA Is Here!

The June 28, 2025, deadline for ensuring products and services meet the European Accessibility Act’s(EAA) accessibility requirements has passed. What does this mean for organizations that provide products and services to consumers in the European Union (EU)?

Accessibility Means Access to the EU Market

The EAA’s biggest motivator is to ensure that products and services available on the EU market are designed to — in the words of EAA itself — “maximise their foreseeable use by persons with disabilities.”

While there’s been a lot of talk about fines and even imprisonment as punishment for nonconformance, the biggest concern for organizations that haven’t met EAA requirements should be loss of access to the EU market.

In other words, if your product or service doesn’t meet EAA’s accessibility requirements, then you may be forced by regulators to withdraw it from the EU market.

By contrast, meeting accessibility requirements helps ensure you provide products and services that can be successfully used by the large and growing number of people with disabilities in the EU. That’s over 101 million people, according to 2023 figures from the European Council.

EAA Means Excellent Over Sufficient

And don’t think that barely meeting technical compliance is sufficient. In a future marketplace, inaccessible options will be scarce if not absent. The products and services that will be most attractive to consumers will be built with a creative and thoughtful approach to usability and user experience for people with disabilities.

That means you’ll need to excel with your accessibility efforts to stand out in the market.

So don’t treat EAA as a one-time effort to achieve compliance. EAA encourages a progressive, persistent, creative, and participatory approach to inclusive and accessible product and service design.

EAA merits investment in growing organizational accessibility maturity. It’s a reason to build capacity through establishing processes, smart use of tools to automate processes, staff training and support, and a cultural adoption of accessibility as a core value.

This digital accessibility legislation is different. Make the effort and reap the rewards!