The European Accessibility Act Is Live: What U.S. Businesses Selling to Europe Must Do in 2026
The EAA became enforceable on June 28, 2025 across all 27 EU member states — and it reaches U.S. companies that sell to European customers. Here is who is covered and what conformance requires.
A second compliance regime quietly went live
Most U.S. businesses have spent the last few years focused on the ADA. Meanwhile, a second, broader accessibility regime came into force overseas — and many American companies are subject to it without realizing it. The European Accessibility Act (EAA), Directive (EU) 2019/882, became enforceable on June 28, 2025, and applies across all 27 EU member states.
If you sell products or services to consumers in the European Union, the EAA may already apply to you. Unlike the ADA's largely complaint-driven enforcement, the EAA is a proactive market-surveillance regime: regulators in each member state can audit, demand documentation, and impose penalties without waiting for a lawsuit.
Does the EAA apply to a U.S. company?
The EAA is about the market, not the company's location. It applies to "economic operators" that place covered products or services on the EU market — regardless of where the business is headquartered. In practice, you should assume you are in scope if you sell into the EU and offer things like:
- E-commerce (consumer online stores and checkout)
- Banking and consumer financial services
- E-books and e-readers
- Ticketing, transport booking, and travel services
- Telecommunications and certain streaming/AV services
- Computers, smartphones, ATMs, payment terminals, and similar hardware
There is a limited carve-out: microenterprises (broadly, fewer than 10 staff and under €2 million in annual turnover) that provide services are largely exempt. But most U.S. companies actively selling into Europe are bigger than that — and the product-side rules are stricter than the service-side rules.
What conformance actually requires
The EAA sets accessibility requirements; the harmonized technical standard used to demonstrate conformance is EN 301 549, which in turn incorporates WCAG 2.1 Level AA for web content. For most web and app teams, that is the headline: if your digital product conforms to WCAG 2.1 AA, you are most of the way to EAA conformance for the web portion. (EN 301 549 also covers hardware and documentation requirements that go beyond the web.)
That standard will feel familiar to anyone who has worked on ADA compliance — it is the same 50-criterion WCAG 2.1 AA target U.S. courts apply. The work overlaps heavily, which is good news: a single accessibility program can serve both regimes.
How the EAA differs from the ADA
Even with the shared WCAG foundation, the obligations differ in ways that matter:
- Proactive, not reactive. EU authorities can initiate market surveillance; you do not have to be sued to face scrutiny.
- Documentation is mandatory. Covered businesses must maintain accessibility documentation and, in many cases, publish an accessibility statement describing how the product or service meets requirements.
- Product scope. The EAA reaches hardware and packaged products, not just websites.
- Penalties vary by member state. Each EU country sets its own enforcement and sanctions, so exposure depends on where your customers are.
What U.S. businesses should do now
If you have EU customers, the EAA is not a "someday" item — it has been enforceable since mid-2025. A practical sequence:
- Determine coverage. Map which of your products and services reach EU consumers and whether the microenterprise exemption could apply.
- Audit to WCAG 2.1 AA / EN 301 549. Start with a free compliance scan, then commission a professional audit against the full standard.
- Remediate the barriers — prioritizing the same high-frequency issues (contrast, alt text, form labels, keyboard access) that dominate every accessibility data set.
- Publish an accessibility statement and keep conformance documentation on file.
- Build it into your release process so new features ship accessible rather than being retrofitted under deadline pressure.
For a deeper look at the EAA alongside other non-U.S. regimes, see our international accessibility law guide.
The strategic takeaway
For U.S. companies, the EAA changes the calculus in one important way: accessibility is no longer just lawsuit-avoidance in the American market. It is now table stakes for selling into Europe, enforced proactively. The efficient move is to stop treating ADA and EAA as separate fire drills and build one WCAG-based accessibility program that satisfies both. The standard is shared; the only question is whether you get ahead of it or scramble after an enforcement notice arrives.