Website accessibility: does the 2025 EU rule apply to you, and what should you do?

Since 28 June 2025, accessibility requirements apply to online stores and several other online services across the European Union. This article is about website accessibility: who it applies to, and who does not need to worry. The basis is the European Accessibility Act (Directive (EU) 2019/882), which each member state transposed with its own law. In Romania, that is Law 232/2022.

Since then, several clients have asked me: does this apply to me? The short answer: for a small business, often not, but the essential part is worth doing anyway. This article is not legal advice. It is about what I see as a web developer and what the text of the law says.

What is website accessibility?

A site that can also be used by people who do not browse with a mouse and perfect eyesight: people with low vision, blind people (whose screen reader reads the page aloud), people with motor disabilities (who navigate with the keyboard only), or simply older people who find small, faint text hard to read.

In practice, this means a few concrete things:

• Enough contrast between text and background.
• Text descriptions on images (alt text), so a screen reader can say what is in them.
• A site that works with the keyboard, with a visible focus indicator.
• Labelled form fields, with clear error messages.
• A logical heading order, so the page structure can be followed when read aloud.
• Large enough tap targets, especially on mobile.

The technical benchmark is the European standard EN 301 549, which for websites is essentially based on the international WCAG guidelines.

Who does it apply to?

The law covers specific products and services. From a website's point of view, the most important thing is that e-commerce services, meaning online stores, are included. So are banking services, e-books, and the online interfaces of certain transport services.

The text of the law is primarily about services offered to consumers. A simple company presentation website where nothing can be bought is not directly covered by the obligation. (Public sector websites fall under other, earlier rules.)

The important exemption: micro-enterprises

The law exempts micro-enterprises that provide services. A micro-enterprise is a company with:

• fewer than 10 employees, and
• an annual turnover or balance sheet total of no more than 2 million euros.

The vast majority of family-run online stores, small guesthouses and local service providers in Szeklerland fall into this category. Under the law, they are exempt. If you have grown, though, or operate as part of a larger company, it is worth checking this precisely with your accountant.

For non-compliant services the law provides for fines and other measures, and for consumer services enforcement falls to the National Authority for Consumer Protection (ANPC).

Why do it even if it is not mandatory?

Three reasons:

• Some of your customers are affected. There are people with low vision in every age group, and more of them in an ageing customer base. If they cannot read the price or fill in the checkout form, they simply buy elsewhere.
• It is the same as good SEO. Alt text, logical headings and a readable structure also help Google and AI search engines understand the page. I wrote about the steps of SEO here.
• If you grow, you do not have to rebuild. Making an online store accessible after the fact costs far more than building it properly from the start.

My own site scores 100 on the accessibility audit in Google PageSpeed, on both mobile and desktop. It did not cost anything extra, because most of it comes down to careful development. I wrote about the measurement here.

How to check your own site

A few free steps you can take yourself:

• Measure it at pagespeed.web.dev. The "Accessibility" score and its list are a good starting point, although it does not measure everything.
• Try it with the keyboard only. Can you get through the menu, the buttons and the checkout with the Tab key? Can you always see where you are?
• Zoom to 200% in the browser. Does it stay readable without the layout breaking?
• Look at your images. Do they all have descriptive alt text, or are they called "IMG_2034.jpg"?

Beware of one-click accessibility tools

There are paid add-ons that promise "instant compliance" with a floating icon. They typically do not fix the underlying problems (missing alt text, wrong labels, a menu that cannot be reached by keyboard). They only put an interface on top. Screen reader users often find them outright disruptive. The real fix is putting the site itself in order.

If you run an online store and are not sure where it stands, send me the address and I will tell you what I see. For a new online store, these points are part of my work from the start.