Disproportionate burden under Article 14

The Act allows exemption where meeting a requirement would impose a disproportionate burden. The exemption is not self-executing: it exists only if you have actually assessed it and can produce the reasoning.

What the exemption is, and is not

It is an exemption from specific requirements for specific content, justified by a documented cost–benefit assessment. It is not a way to defer accessibility work generally, and it does not survive being asserted without reasoning.

Two things make a claim fragile: applying it broadly rather than to named scope, and having no contemporaneous record of the assessment. An authority asking about it will ask for the documentation, and Article 14(6) obliges you to produce it.

What the worksheet captures

The generator produces an Article 14 worksheet with the structure the assessment needs:

• The microenterprise check. Service providers with fewer than 10 people and at most 2 million euro turnover are exempted from the obligations by Article 4(5). This is a different exemption from Article 14 and worth establishing first, because if it applies the burden analysis may be moot.
• The Annex VI criteria, as explicit prompts: the estimated cost of compliance, the benefit to the organisation, the estimated impact on people with disabilities, and the frequency and duration of use.
• The excluded scope, named specifically, so the claim is bounded.
• The reassessment date, computed as five years from the assessment date, alongside the two other triggers.

Unfilled prompts render visibly as "to be completed" rather than being omitted. That is deliberate: a worksheet that hides its gaps invites you to file it half-done.

The honest use of it

The most useful thing about writing the assessment down is that it is often unconvincing on paper. Costs estimated properly are frequently lower than assumed, and the "frequency and duration of use" criterion tends to expose that the excluded content matters more to users than it did to the roadmap.

A claim recorded in a document with a reassessment date, revisited on schedule, is a considerably better position than one made informally and never revisited. That is true whether or not anyone ever asks to see it.

Sources

• Directive (EU) 2019/882 — Article 14 and Annex VI
• Article 4(5) for the microenterprise exemption for services

Common questions

What is a disproportionate burden under the European Accessibility Act?

Article 14 of Directive (EU) 2019/882 allows a provider to be exempted from specific accessibility requirements where meeting them would require a significant change to the product or service, or impose a disproportionate burden. It is an exemption from named requirements, not a blanket exemption, and it has to be justified against the criteria in Annex VI.

What does the assessment have to weigh?

Annex VI sets the criteria: the ratio of the net costs of compliance to the overall costs and revenues of the provider, the estimated costs and benefits for the provider weighed against the estimated benefit for persons with disabilities, taking account of the frequency and duration of use of the specific product or service. Organisation size matters, so a cost that is disproportionate for a small provider may not be for a large one.

How long does a disproportionate-burden assessment last?

Article 14(5) requires it to be reassessed at the latest every five years, when the service offering is modified, or when the market surveillance authority requests it. Five years is a ceiling rather than a schedule — a redesign restarts the clock regardless of how recently you assessed.

Do we have to tell anyone we are relying on it?

Yes. Article 14(6) requires the provider to inform the relevant authority when relying on the exemption, and the assessment documentation must be kept and produced on request. It should also appear in the accessibility statement, so a user encountering the excluded content understands why and what alternative exists.