28 June marks an important day for accessibility, as a number of products and services will be required to comply with requirements outlined in the European Accessibility Act.
The European Accessibility Act, which came into force in 2019 following a long campaign by the European Disability movement, is a crucial legal basis for ensuring equal access for persons with disabilities.
Now, we need national governments, businesses and private organisations to do their part.
Businesses must view this as an opportunity to fill a clear gap by creating products and services that the greatest number of people can use, beyond the legal requirements of the Act. Ensuring accessibility will open new markets and align companies with European values of diversity and inclusion. Its obligations extend to importers and distributors. Following the Act makes good business sense at a time when European companies need to be more competitive and innovative than ever.
European Union institutions and national governments must do their part to support them by providing assistance and establishing robust enforcement mechanisms. Projects like the AccessibleEU Centre are a good start, but must be expanded into European and National Agencies for Accessibility with expertise on accessibility.
Accessibility is needed for persons with disabilities, but it is beneficial to all, including European businesses.
Everyone must do their part.
We call on businesses and private organisations to:
- Follow the clear trend of the European Accessibility Act and guarantee that all their products and services are accessible.
- Involve accessibility experts and users with disabilities when developing their products and services.
We call on national governments to:
- Expand the legal obligations on accessibility to other products and services, through national laws;
- Involve organisations of persons with disabilities in the monitoring and enforcement of the European Accessibility Act and other laws on accessibility.
- Invest the necessary human and financial resources in the enforcement and monitoring national authorities responsible for accessibility and facilitate their cooperation with representative organisations of persons with disabilities.
We call on the European Union to:
- Establish a European Accessibility Agency that provides specialised support to the EU and Member States on accessibility policies, and to public authorities, businesses, and the whole community on how to implement accessibility in practice.
- Make sure that accessibility for persons with disabilities is an obligation in all new legislation. Such provisions must include a reference to the European Accessibility Act in order to ensure legal certainty.
List of products and services that need to be accessible after 28 June 2025
Products:
- Consumer general-purpose computer hardware systems (i.e. computers, tablets, laptops) and operating systems for those hardware systems (e.g. Windows or MacOS);
- Payment terminals (for example, in shops or restaurants) ;
- Self-service terminals related to the services covered by the Directive (ATMs, ticketing machines, check-in machines, and interactive self-service terminals providing information ;
- Consumer terminal equipment with interactive computing capability, used for electronic communication services (in other words, Smartphones, tablets capable of calling);
- Consumer terminal equipment with interactive computing capability, used for accessing audiovisual media services (for example, TV equipment, such as smart TVs, involving digital television services);
- E-readers (for example, Amazon Kindle or Tolino e-reader);
Services:
- Electronic communication services (for example, services of Orange, or Vodafone)
- Services providing access to audio-visual media services (for example, websites or apps of TV channels like BBC iPlayer and video on demand platforms like Netflix)
- Consumer banking services (for example, withdrawing money, transfers, online banking, opening a bank account)
- E-books
- E-commerce (meaning, websites or mobile applications through which companies sell their products or services online)
- Specific elements of transport services related to information and ticketing, except as for urban, suburban and regional transport services for which only the self-service terminals are covered by this Directive.
It is important to remember that during the negotiations of this Directive, the position of national governments represented by the Council of the EU often differed from our position, for example, when it came to the inclusion of the built environment or urban transport services. However, the European Accessibility Act is a minimum harmonisation Directive, and this means that there is nothing preventing national governments to go beyond the scope of this legislation to cover further products, services and environments.