The European Accessibility Act (EAA) is here. Is your organisation ready? We have built a FREE tool to help you find out.

The EAA is now being enforced. A quick, simplified look at what it means, who it affects, and how to find out where your organisation stands.

There's a particular kind of quiet that follows a big compliance deadline. The date passes, nothing dramatic happens on the day itself, and it's tempting to assume all is and will be fine.

That has been the case with the European Accessibility Act (EAA). The Act became enforceable across all 27 EU member states in June 2025, and enforcement has moved from theory to reality. The first lawsuits have been filed in France. Market surveillance is actively underway in Sweden and the Netherlands. Warning letters are circulating in Germany. The organisations receiving these letters are, for the most part, not the ones who intentionally ignored the law. They're the ones who assumed they were already compliant and never actually checked.

What is the EAA and who is affected

At its heart, the EAA requires that a wide range of digital products and services be usable by people with disabilities, including the growing number who'll acquire access needs simply through ageing.

It applies far more broadly than many businesses realise. If your organisation runs an e-commerce site, a banking or payments service, a booking or ticketing system, an app, an e-book or e-learning platform, or sells into the EU in almost any consumer-facing way, you're likely in scope of the EAA. And crucially, it reaches UK and international businesses too. Selling into the EU is enough to bring you under the Act.

There are some exemptions like micro-enterprises, but the criterion for exemptions is much narrower than people think, so it's important to truly check and assess whether you are exempt and to not assume.

Accessibility is not only technical

Here's the thing that surprises people. EAA readiness is not technical question. It's an organisational one. For example, you can have a reasonably accessible website and still be exposed because you have no named owner for accessibility, no accessibility statement published, no idea whether your third-party checkout widget is compliant, and no documentation to show the regulator if they ask. Equally, you can have all the right governance in place and still have a website riddled with inaccessible elements.

Organisational readiness sits across five areas.

• Governance: is anyone actually accountable for accessibility, and does leadership have visibility of the risk?

• Scope mapping: does the organisation know which of its products and services fall under the Act?

• Procurement and third parties: are the external tools and suppliers baked into your digital service compliant or an area of risk and exposure?

• Documentation: could you readily evidence compliance if asked?

• Culture and capability: do your design, development and support teams know how to build and maintain accessible experiences?

Weakness in any one of these can undermine the others. And most organisations have no clear picture of how they score across all five.

A simple, practical tool to help

SIAS is now offering a free tool to help you assess your organisational readiness under 10 minutes. The toolkit walks you through 25 straightforward questions across those five areas and gives you an instant, honest readiness score.

An example of readiness assessment score

You'll get:

• An overall readiness score, with a clear Red / Amber / Green rating

• A breakdown showing which of the five areas are strong and which need urgent attention

• Your top priority actions, so you know where to start rather than staring at the whole problem.

  
  

The toolkit is simple and traightforward. It takes about ten minutes. There's nothing to install, and you'll come away knowing far more about your real exposure than you did before you started.

But it won't make you compliant. Nothing can do that so quickly. But it will tell you, clearly and without jargon, whether you're in reasonable shape or whether the issue needs to move up your priority list. And that clarity is worth having before a regulator or a competitor decides to find out for you.

And if you would like help to turn your results into action, please get in touch

Start your Self-Assessment