What the European Accessibility Act requires in an accessibility statement
Directive (EU) 2019/882 has been enforceable since 28 June 2025. This is what it asks of the document, in plain terms, with the sources.
What the document has to contain
Annex V of the Directive frames this as information about how the service meets the accessibility requirements. Read alongside the model statement that member states already use, that resolves to a document with these parts:
- A compliance status — fully compliant, partially compliant, or not compliant. Stating "partially compliant" honestly is a normal and acceptable outcome; overclaiming is the risk.
- The non-accessible content, described specifically, with the requirement each part fails. Referencing the EN 301 549 clause is what makes this checkable rather than a gesture.
- Anything excluded under a disproportionate-burden assessment, and the alternative offered where one exists.
- How the statement was prepared — self-assessment or third-party evaluation — and the date.
- A feedback mechanism, so a user who cannot use the service can tell you and request the content another way.
- The enforcement route, naming the body a user can escalate to if you do not respond adequately.
That last point is where generic generators fall down, and it is not a detail. The competent body differs by member state and often by sector within a member state. Ireland designates different authorities for e-commerce, telecoms, banking and transport. Spain devolves enforcement to the autonomous communities. Germany gives consumers a conciliation route before the market surveillance authority. A statement that names the wrong body sends a real complaint to an organisation that cannot act on it.
The country pages record the verified enforcement body for each jurisdiction this tool supports, with the sources and the date each was last checked.
What "accessible format" means for the statement itself
The information has to be provided in a way that people with disabilities can actually use. A statement published only as a scanned PDF, or as an image, fails on its own terms — an unusually visible failure, since it is the one document specifically about your accessibility.
In practice: real HTML with proper headings, or a tagged PDF if you need a document format. This tool emits self-contained HTML that is checked with axe-core in CI, and its PDF output carries a structure tree, a document language and a title.
How honest the statement should be
More honest than feels comfortable. The document is a declaration you can be held to, and the failure mode that causes trouble is claiming conformance you cannot evidence.
Two consequences worth internalising. Automated testing finds roughly a third of accessibility problems, so a statement generated only from a scanner cannot responsibly claim full conformance. And criteria you have not evaluated should be reported as not evaluated, rather than quietly omitted or assumed to pass. That is why this tool ships a manual checklist alongside the automated evidence, and why its default posture is conservative.
Sources
- Directive (EU) 2019/882 — the Act itself; Annex V covers the information requirement, Article 14 the disproportionate-burden assessment
- Commission Implementing Decision (EU) 2018/1523 — the model accessibility statement most national formats derive from
- Directive (EU) 2016/2102 — the Web Accessibility Directive, for public-sector bodies
Common questions
Does the European Accessibility Act require an accessibility statement?
It requires service providers to publish information about how the service meets the accessibility requirements, in an accessible format, and to keep it as long as the service is offered. Annex V of Directive (EU) 2019/882 sets out what that information covers. In practice this is published as an accessibility statement, and most member states have built on the model statement already established for public-sector bodies by Commission Implementing Decision (EU) 2018/1523.
Who has to publish one?
Providers of the services listed in Article 2 — e-commerce, consumer banking, e-books, electronic communications, passenger transport information, and access to audiovisual media services — where they operate in the EU. Microenterprises providing services (fewer than 10 people and at most 2 million euro annual turnover) are exempted from the obligations by Article 4(5), though the exemption is narrower than it first appears and is worth checking with counsel.
What is the 28 June 2027 deadline?
Article 32 allows service contracts concluded before 28 June 2025 to continue unchanged until they expire, and no later than 28 June 2030, and allows self-service terminals in use before that date to run to the end of their economic life. The commonly cited 2027 date is when the transitional room for many arrangements closes in practice. Individual member states express these dates slightly differently in their own transposing law — Germany, for example, writes the 2030 date as 27 June.
Is this the same as the Web Accessibility Directive?
No, and they stack rather than replace each other. Directive (EU) 2016/2102 covers public-sector websites and mobile apps. The European Accessibility Act covers named private-sector products and services. An organisation can fall under both, and several member states apply different enforcement bodies to each.