Another 20 top European Accessibility Act (EAA) questions answered

Deque recently partnered with Forrester on an exclusive European Accessibility Act (EAA) webinar. Gina Bhawalkar, Principal Analyst at Forrester Research, was our special guest speaker.

The Q&A portion of the event was particularly active, and it was clear from the questions attendees were asking that people remain unsure about who the EAA applies to, how it applies, and what they need to do to get compliant.

We saw something similar after an earlier EAA-themed webinar, and we followed that event with a post that provided answers to 20 of the most commonly asked questions during the session.

To keep providing you with the information you need, we’ve identified a second group of twenty pressing questions about the EAA. The answers below consolidate perspectives shared by Gina and me during our presentation, augmented by additional input from Deque’s experts.

1. The EAA deadline is coming up quickly. What do you recommend organizations do to meet that deadline?

Well, the first thing is, don’t panic. Deque, Forrester, and companies like us are all here to help you.

Meeting the first deadline

As you look ahead to June 2025, please remember that the first deadline is about generating clean code and about how you create new content after the deadline.

No one is expecting you to immediately remediate every single digital asset your organization has ever created (that’s the 2030 deadline!). What you do need is to have the culture and processes in place to sustain accessible practices for the long term.

That last point is a critical one—the EAA is not going away. You will be doing this over the long term.

The importance of collaboration

Cross-functional partnership is key to achieving the long-term change required by the EAA. Accessibility leaders need to think about who they can partner with in their organizations and where there are best practices already established that they can borrow or learn from—these could be internal or external.

Your organization likely has a customer experience (CX) team or a team that is leading your “voice of the customer” (VOC) program. These teams are skilled at digesting and analyzing customer feedback and processing customer complaints. You can meet with them to discuss having published feedback channels as part of your accessibility statement. You can learn from them how to become more efficient and effective as you create and implement your new accessibility processes.

You can also talk to your design team. They will likely be running usability studies and conducting design concept testing.

These relationships can be mutually beneficial. As accessibility professionals, you’re in a position to help CX and UX teams learn more about disability etiquette and how to write for and inclusively communicate with People with Disabilities (PwDs), as well as help them complete accessibility conformance testing. You can also start bringing people with disabilities into that research to make sure your organization is designing for accessibility from the start.

There are similar opportunities with other teams, including DEI, procurement, legal, and more. One way we measure program maturity is by the existence and success of these partnerships and collaborations.

Ultimately, while there are tactical steps your organization needs to take to meet EAA requirements, the bigger picture is about high-level organizational transformation. Accessibility is everyone’s responsibility, and creating accessible products and services benefits everyone—your customers, your employees, and your bottom line.

2. How do we make the business case for EAA compliance and digital accessibility?

This is a really important question. First, it’s essential that your organization understands that creating an accessibility program is not just about EAA compliance. While the EAA is a great catalyst for getting the conversation started, accessible experiences are about more than just customers with disabilities (although that’s the primary focus for why we need to do this)—digital accessibility benefits all your customers and brings more people in the door.

Accordingly, there is a direct correlation to revenue.

Expanding your reach

There are 1.3 billion people in the world who have disabilities. Digital accessibility is critical to ensure your organization’s access to that group.

We also have 760 million people globally who are over 65 and potentially acquiring disabilities as they age. They also benefit from accessible products and services. Beyond that, we have 3.3 billion people who are friends and family members of people with disabilities—these people prefer to give their dollars to organizations that don’t shut out their friends and family members.

There are other motivators you can draw on. These include everything from operational efficiency and risk mitigation to market share and competitive advantage. Each of these motivators has a different audience in your company. You need to target the right motivator to the right audience to gain traction and prove ROI.

Improving experiences for everyone

Accessibility may focus on the needs of people with disabilities, but everyone benefits. Consider some examples from the physical world. Curb cuts and ramps don’t just benefit people who use walkers and wheelchairs—they’re also used by parents with strollers, shoppers pushing carts, children walking their bikes, and delivery people with heavy hand trucks. Everybody benefits from these accessibility improvements and experiences.

The same logic applies to digital accessibility. Everyone benefits from an easy-to-navigate web page, buttons that are clear about their functions, logically ordered headers and subheaders, and fonts that are easy to read. Creating accessible products and services isn’t just good compliance; it’s good business.

And remember, business isn’t just about bringing revenue in. It’s about reducing costs and increasing efficiency. Enabling your teams to catch and fix accessibility issues early and start building accessibly from the start will save your organization a great deal of time and money because remediation is expensive and time-consuming.

Enhancing your brand

There are other measurable benefits, particularly concerning brand perception—especially your employer brand. Embracing accessibility helps you attract employees who have disabilities and employees who value inclusion and want to work for organizations that share those values.

As an accessible brand, you’re saying you care about your customers, regardless of their background or abilities.

Digital accessibility represents a business opportunity. As with any business opportunity, those who lead the way and capture the available audience first benefit the most. A vast market opens when you become accessible. Do you want your competitors to gain access to that market before you do?

3. What is the best way for a large company to gather and retain conformance data?

The first thing to look at is your software development life cycle (SDLC) and release management models. Ideally, you want your organization to test at every stage–in design, in development, at pipeline integration, and in QA, as well as during internal compliance audits.

Next, assess how your organization stores release documentation and whether this same methodology could be expanded to include design and compliance organizations. You’ll need to address questions such as: Is storing information within a ticketing system like Jira sufficient, or do your internal audit and legal teams need a formal package gathered, audited, and stored in a risk-tracking system like Archer?

Every organization should build a sustainable data collection process. It needs to offer the lowest friction possible for end users while simultaneously meeting the exacting standards that teams responsible for regulatory inquiry response will need.

The EAA states that economic operators must fully cooperate with the market surveillance authorities. Organizations should be prepared for monitoring bodies to inquire with them.

In a traditional regulatory response unit, the company makes a “case” demonstrating what happened, how it responded, and what it intends to do next. To do this, they will:

• Deploy a small task force to gather the data they need to document a proper and thorough response.
• Request any feedback related to the matter (e.g., an email from an end user) and for copies of all transactions and communications.
• Determine whether the problem can be recreated, if conformance testing was completed, and for all documents related to the company’s steps to ensure conformance across the SDLC.

Running a mock response exercise can identify what needs to be tracked and how information should be stored. Almost every organization of sufficient size has a team that helps work through process flow creation for these types of simulations and mock drills—typically service designers or internal auditors. As an accessibility professional, you can collaborate with them to help you build your processes for EAA.

4. Does the June 2025 EAA deadline for services include all websites and mobile apps?

Yes, websites and mobile apps are included, but this requires additional clarification.

Existing applications (that existed before the deadline and will not change after) are “grandfathered” in and are exempted from the 2025 deadline accordingly. You will have until 2030 to remediate them. Anything created net new after the deadline must be compliant from the start.

This is why we stress the importance of being able to produce clean code by June 28, 2025. Because anything new published after that date will need to be compliant.

This is also why we continue to stress that success depends on organizational change. It means educating your teams about what’s required, equipping them with the right tools and training to do their work successfully, and enabling them to thrive in a culture of digital inclusion that ultimately goes beyond compliance.

5. Can you provide clarity on how EAA applies respectively to B2B and B2C?

At first glance, the conventional understanding here seems straightforward and legal experts are in agreement: B2C is covered under the EAA, while B2B is presumed to be out of scope.

However, upon closer inspection, the reality is more complicated. While you may think the EAA does not apply to your organization because you sell B2B, that might not actually be the case..

We are encouraging clients to adopt a more nuanced approach to regulatory interpretation and to look closely at product-consumer relationships across the entire product lifecycle.

B2B

Say you have a physical object sold solely as a B2B product (meaning the brand does not sell the device directly to consumers). What happens if the installation instructions for that product are only available on the brand’s consumer-facing website? Suddenly, you have a consumer implication. The consumer website may also be where you activate the product warranty, get customer support, and provide feedback. Packaging is also in scope for EAA, and with a CE mark on the product and the product being provided inside packaging, the EAA applies—even though the product itself is being sold strictly B2B.

B2B2C

While your business may only sell its products to other businesses (B2B), if your business customer, in turn, sells to consumers (B2C), then your products and services must be accessible because the ultimate end user is a consumer. So, you must examine the entire product flow to make accessibility and compliance determinations.

In addition to advocating for product-centric analysis, we also encourage organizations to consider the optics of only supporting the minimum covered by regulation. The spirit of the EAA is about making everything accessible to everyone, and this will be the broad expectation going forward. In this context, running a business via an exclusionary methodology can be a costly model to support.

6. I need to develop an accessibility program for my organization. What are some examples of education that you’d suggest?

Different roles will have different goals, whether it’s a designer who needs to avoid creating defects, a developer receiving and implementing code feedback, or a tester trying to standardize defect management.

Role-based accessibility training is an ideal way to increase efficiency, build team confidence, and drive program momentum.

At Deque, we think of accessibility education as happening across six general categories:

1. Awareness. Everyone across your organization needs digital accessibility awareness and should understand your organization’s plan for addressing accessibility.
2. Fundamentals. All members of your organization should be assigned formal accessibility training, whether through your L&D platform or by similar means. Areas of focus can include policy knowledge, disability etiquette, and more.
3. Role-based learning. Each role within your organization with direct responsibility under your policy should have training specific to their role. A developer should have courses on standard success criteria and how to remediate. Procurement, legal, and risk & compliance should be trained on accessibility fundamentals, regulation, and testing basics. Training should enable individuals to gain real-time knowledge as they encounter real-time issues.
4. Tool training. Once testing software is in place, you need to empower teams to use the tools correctly, efficiently, and effectively.
5. Testing and conformance. To ensure your testing and conformance teams are testing consistently and share the same interpretations of “pass” and “fail,” you need to provide specific and specialized training.
6. Advanced solutioning and topics. Individuals who support the rest of your enterprise, such as Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) and development leads, should have advanced training to ensure that they can help with remediation interpretations, design solutioning, and problem-solving. You can also consider requiring certain roles or individuals to have professional certifications such as CPACC or WAS.

Your curriculum should include a plan for educating existing staff and onboarding new staff, as well as a continuous or multi-year education component.

7. Do you have any suggestions for how to tie KPIs and metrics to accessibility improvements?

This is an excellent question because there are two different things to measure.

First, there is your accessibility program itself. You must be able to report on how the program is progressing and performing against goals. There is also the accessibility of any given asset. How accessible is your mobile app? That’s something else you’ll need to report on.

It’s important to have KPIs and metrics tied to both your program and the assets your program is focused on.

You can start by identifying one thing you will measure and track for each. For example, you might want to measure the time it takes to fix an accessibility issue from when it’s first identified to when it successfully passes testing. You can set a goal for how much you’d like to reduce that time and then track your performance against that goal.

You can also focus your efforts on a particular target—for example, the mobile app, as mentioned above. You can begin by establishing your current state using a combination of automated and manual testing. These tests will reveal any accessibility issues. From there, you can set goals around what you’re going to fix and your timeline for implementing those fixes.

Part of this process involves understanding what you’re able to measure today versus what you want to be able to measure going forward. This will help clarify what analyzing and reporting functionality you might need to build. You can talk to your customer, data, and IT teams to explore what data you’ll need and how to go about gathering it.

For additional insight, please check out Matthew Luken’s presentation from axe-con 2024: Building your program through metrics and storytelling. In this free video, you’ll learn how to tell stories with your existing data, determine what your tools can tell you, and discover how to amplify your message to build relationships between design, development, testing, and risk compliance.

8. Instead of using WCAG as the guideline for accessibility, should US companies switch to EN 301 549 to provide a universal, accessible approach for their products and services?

Regardless of where you are headquartered, every company should very carefully map out a testing protocol that offers the most efficient process possible to deliver universal conformance test data.

You can then use this data to complete various accessibility conformance and regulatory reporting. An efficient methodology for test mapping enables your organization to skip running tests repeatedly on the same digital product for different standards and jurisdictions.

For US-based, multinational companies where the EAA Directive applies, testing EN 301 549 will provide a more universal approach, as EN 301 549 covers WCAG 2.1 AA success criteria.

9. How should a decentralized company approach the issue of compliance under EAA?

In our experience, companies are often more centralized than they might think.

For example, even in an organization with many different IT teams, they will generally all report to one central IT leader. Security is also rarely a diversified function. More often than not, it is a universal function for the entire company.

The key for accessibility teams is to latch onto how IT and security are operating and leverage those existing practices and protocols to achieve a similar balance of distribution and centralization.

To have a successful program where decentralized teams operate under centralized accessibility leadership, you need a common operating model or standard operating procedure (SOP), where everything from common tool decisions to pass/fail guidance is determined centrally.

While each team can separately complete their work as defined, you still need to establish who is making which decisions at which level. Another requirement for this approach is having someone to “check the work”—a separate team that can ensure decentralized teams are executing within the operating model specifications.

The size of your organization will have a significant effect on the approach you choose. The larger the company, the more challenging centralization becomes, but there’s no reason you can’t have a distributed model and a hybrid model at the same time. We actually see this a lot in multinationals.

10. After the June 2025 deadline, what will be considered an in-scope “new” product or service? For example, will only totally new in-app features be considered in-scope, or will the new regulations also apply to updates of existing products?

Let’s begin with some simple examples of what would be considered “new” products:

• A new, first-time-in-market mobile app.
• A new, launching-for-the-first-time loyalty program that offers enrollments and redemptions.
• A new, not-previously-available app capability—for example, the ability to remotely deposit a check. (In this case, the entire user flow to deposit a check is new.)

Here’s a more complex example focusing on a service: Suppose you have an existing website, and your marketing team wants to refresh the home page with a new hero image. That new hero image should be conformant, as it is “new” content that is being added to an existing digital property. However (and here’s the complex part), given that WCAG conformance is measured at the page level, the entire page needs to be conformant to launch!

This is why Deque continues to emphasize the importance of a strong program that can create and confirm conformance.

11. How can we ensure that our web content and downloadable documents (PDFs, Word files, presentations) meet the accessibility requirements set by the EAA, and are there any unique considerations for document formats?

Ensuring that web content and downloadable documents comply with the EAA begins with aligning them to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 AA standard, as referenced by the EAA’s primary technical framework, EN 301 549. This standard applies to web-based interfaces and also non-web documents, such as PDFs, Word files, and presentations.

Steps to ensure compliance:

1. Adopt WCAG-based principles across all content: Use the POUR framework (Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, Robust) to assess the accessibility of online content and downloadable files. For example, ensure clear navigation, sufficient contrast ratios, and appropriate text alternatives for non-text content such as images.
2. Leverage authoring tools with accessibility features: Many document creation tools, such as Microsoft Word, Adobe Acrobat, and PowerPoint, include built-in accessibility checkers. Using these features ensures documents are created with appropriate semantic structure, such as headings, lists, and tables with proper markup.
3. Tag PDFs to create semantic structure: PDF files should be tagged properly to allow assistive technologies to parse and read the content effectively. This includes ensuring the document has a logical reading order, accessible hyperlinks, and alternate text for images.
4. Consider multi-language support: If your content is available in multiple languages, use language metadata to assist screen readers in recognizing and switching to the correct pronunciation rules.
5. Test for document accessibility: Both automated and manual testing are necessary. Use tools like axe, PAC 3, or the accessibility checker built into Adobe Acrobat for PDFs. Combine these tests with manual reviews to identify issues like improperly tagged complex elements or untested assistive technology behaviors.

Make sure to look very carefully through the deadline and exemption information. Documents created (and moved to production) after June 28, 2025, must be accessible. Pre-recorded time-based media, office file formats, online maps, and content that qualifies as archived materials are impacted by this deadline.

12. Is multi-channel feedback a suggestion or a requirement? If our accessibility statement has a contact email, does that suffice? Or do we need to provide other avenues for feedback, such as an interactive chat?

The EAA Directive does not directly address specific requirements for gathering consumer feedback on accessibility. However, the importance of making information about accessibility features available to consumers is emphasized, as is providing mechanisms for consumers to raise concerns or complaints about non-compliance.

Your accessibility statement should include a feedback mechanism for gathering any concerns or complaints.

While the EAA does not explicitly require it, multi-channel feedback is an industry best practice. It allows individuals with different disabilities to use their preferred channel. For example, a neurodivergent customer might prefer a chat agent, while someone with dyslexia might choose to speak to a live agent.

13. I’m hearing references to both WCAG 2.1 AA and WCAG 2.2 AA. How do we identify what’s best for our organization?

Choosing between these two WCAG versions is an operational and business decision specific to your organization. We highly encourage you to use your organization’s data to help make this choice.

At Deque, we would recommend going to 2.2 AA as soon as possible. This is in order to future-proof your conformance efforts.

Essentially, it’s a question of whether you do it now or later. Do you really want to come back a year from now and retest and remediate another round of accessibility issues that could have been identified today? If you’re expending capital, the answer is likely “no.”

Ultimately, what we really recommend to organizations is that you test for EN 301 549 conformance. It is the broadest and, therefore, will cover the tests needed for both WCAG 2.1 AA and EN 301 549 conformance. You can additionally determine whether you can afford to test for WACG 2.2 AA simultaneously.

14. Should VPATs/ACRs follow WCAG 2.x or EN 301 549 template formats?

The simplest way to answer this is to say that you should use the template that matches how you’ve tested.

In other words, if you are testing using WCAG, you should report the results using the VPAT WCAG template. If you are testing using EN 301 549, you should report using the VPAT EU template.

At Deque, we encourage international companies that span multiple regulations and jurisdictions to test and report conformance on the VPAT INT template. This template covers 508, EN 301 549, and WCAG success criteria. This approach allows you to publish a single conformance report that can be consumed across the broadest number of audiences around the world. The current version for all four templates is version 2.5.

15. Can you talk briefly about what “audit recreation” means?

To help with this concept, we encourage you to look at your internal release management documentation processes.

Most companies have a package of documentation that they bundle with each release. This package typically includes items such as:

• wireframes
• test results
• UX research findings
• notes

Essentially, it captures all the business decisions made during the sprint or release cycle and contains everything needed to recreate the release should there be an issue in the future.

We strongly believe all accessibility-related information should be contained within this release documentation and not as a separate set of artifacts. 

The EAA implies that companies should be prepared to respond to monitoring body inquiries related to accessibility conformance. They will likely want to see the test results and reports that show what success criteria were tested. They will want to know which assistive technology was used, and they will want to confirm that your teams tested using automated and manual accessibility testing methodologies.

A strong response will require your regulatory team to research your internal data from various teams across your organization. Accordingly, every accessibility program should have rigor and methodology behind it.

16. What accessibility documentation must be provided to site users per the EAA? Do we need to include a VPAT within our accessibility statement?

Service providers are required to include information assessing how their service meets the accessibility requirements in their general terms and conditions or an equivalent document. While the EAA does not specify the use of a VPAT template in the publication of an ACR, this is the most common approach.

We encourage you to read Annex V – Information on Services Meeting Accessibility Requirements, items 1–3:

1. The service provider shall include the information assessing how the service meets the accessibility requirements referred to in Article 4 in the general terms and conditions or equivalent document. The information shall describe the applicable requirements and cover, as far as relevant for the assessment, the design, and the operation of the service. In addition to the consumer information requirements of Directive 2011/83/EU, the information shall, where applicable, contain the following elements:

• • a general description of the service in accessible formats;
  • descriptions and explanations necessary for the understanding of the operation of the service;
  • a description of how the relevant accessibility requirements set out in Annex I are met by the service.

2. To comply with point 1 of this Annex, the service provider may apply in full or in part the harmonised standards and technical specifications, for which references have been published in the Official Journal of the European Union.
3. The service provider shall provide information demonstrating that the service delivery process and its monitoring ensure compliance of the service with point 1 of this Annex and with the applicable requirements of this Directive.

17. Can you provide any advice on how to get funding for digital accessibility?

Funding really comes down to one question: Is the work you need financing for “in plan” or “out of plan?”

The ideal is to have your funding be part of the company’s overall financial plan. However, building an accessibility program budget, getting that budget into the larger plan, ensuring the numbers are above the line, and then actually getting the money is challenging. At the same time, finding out-of-plan dollars is extremely difficult.

We encourage people to go looking for what I like to call “hidden dollars.” Believe it or not, most companies have them.

Generally, a CFO will have funds set aside to respond to changing regulatory and risk environments, and those funds will be considered “in plan.” Because digital accessibility is both a regulatory requirement and a risk factor, there is an opportunity to tap into that money.

From there, on the strength of your initial in-plan funding, you can start building a larger and more comprehensive program. What will you need in terms of headcount, tools, and training? As you answer these questions, you can begin to create a longer-term fiscal model that will make sense for your goals and the company’s overall financial vision.

18. What are the packaging requirements for employees and customers?

Section II of Annex I of the EAA outlines the accessibility requirements related to products listed in Article 2(1). This section states that the packaging and instructions of these products must be made accessible to maximize their use by persons with disabilities.

Furthermore:

• Accessible information: The packaging, including any information provided on it, such as opening and closing instructions, usage guidelines, and disposal information, must be made accessible.
• Information on accessibility features: When available, information about the product’s accessibility features should also be included on the packaging.
• Public availability: Instructions for installation, maintenance, storage, and disposal that are not provided on the product itself but are made available through other means, such as a website, must be publicly available when the product is placed on the market.
• Multi-sensory channels: These instructions must be available through more than one sensory channel, thereby ensuring accessibility for individuals with different types of disabilities.
• Understandable presentation: The instructions must be presented in a way that is understandable to users with disabilities, taking into consideration factors such as language complexity and cognitive abilities.
• Perceivable presentation: The presentation of the instructions should ensure that users with disabilities can perceive the information, taking into consideration factors such as font size, contrast, and alternative formats.
• Text format for alternative formats: The content of the instructions must be available in text formats that can be used to generate alternative formats (e.g., Braille, audio, and more) to be presented in different ways and through multiple sensory channels.
• Alternative presentation for non-textual content: Any non-textual content in the instructions must be accompanied by an alternative presentation that conveys the same information in an accessible format.

19. Does the VPAT/ACR have to be in a specific format?

VPATs are a template and, therefore, are a specific format.

With that said, the EAA does not explicitly include a reporting requirement. Under EAA, an enterprise is accordingly not required to report annually on a specific template in the way, for example, that Section 508 requires.

Instead, monitoring bodies will reach out to the enterprise to request information as necessary.

Having your information on industry standard reporting templates, such as VPAT INT v2.5, is beneficial but is not currently a requirement.

20. If a company is located in country X but sells in country Y, which local law will be applied?

The uniqueness of the EAA is that it applies to EU-based (or headquartered) companies and companies outside the EU conducting business within the EU. Which makes this a particularly fascinating question!

So, let’s try to answer it.

The country where the consumer is located defines the process of filing a complaint to local authorities. Therefore, the law that is local to the consumer will be applied.

However, suppose market surveillance authorities identify non-compliance issues that could affect multiple member states. In that case, they must notify the European Commission and other EU member states about their evaluation findings and any corrective actions they’ve mandated from the economic operator.

In thinking about these issues, you must remember that the EAA is a directive—not a regulation—which states that each EU member must make their own applicable regulation.

So, while in most cases it is going to be the country you are doing business in, not the country you are headquartered or located in, the final answer could depend on which two countries you’re talking about and what the applicable regulations define.

Here is an example of the potential complexities:

A US-based multinational is transacting e-commerce sales into the EU, selling to libraries within the US, and selling to the US Federal government.

This company would have several regulations that would likely apply, including the EAA, all the EU member states’ transpositioned regulations (depending on which of the 27 EU member states they’re selling into), ADA Title II, Section 508, and Section 504.

We encourage you to work with your risk and legal teams to determine what regulations apply to your business and how and to what extent they apply. We also highly encourage your in-house legal counsel to collaborate with external counsel with digital accessibility regulation experience.

Next steps

The June 2025 EAA deadline is now hurtling toward us.

If you haven’t started preparing yet, the urgency couldn’t be higher. And even if you have begun preparations, if your work isn’t complete yet, you’ll need to accelerate your efforts significantly.

Fortunately, Deque is here to help. We have unrivaled expertise and the world’s leading tools, training, and services.

Whether you’re based in the EU—or based elsewhere and doing business there—we can help you quickly identify what you need to do and provide exclusive strategic guidance on how to meet the deadline successfully.

Now is not the time to take risks. Failing to comply with the EAA could mean fines as high as €500,000 and even jail time.

Reach out today to schedule a strategic consultation. Together, we’ll ensure your EAA compliance.