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Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Start by checking whether your website provides a service covered by the European Accessibility Act (EAA)—especially e-commerce—and which national law applies where you serve customers. If it does, map the full customer journey, fix barriers in the site and service itself, and test with automated tools, manual checks, and people with disabilities. A widget or a single automated score cannot establish that the service meets its obligations.
Does the European Accessibility Act apply to my website?
The EAA is Directive (EU) 2019/882. It covers specified products and services, including e-commerce; it is not a rule that automatically gives every website the same obligations. The key question is what service your website provides, not simply whether your business has a website.
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An online shop or ticketing platform may provide a covered e-commerce service. The Directive describes e-commerce accessibility obligations in relation to online sales of products or services. By contrast, the fact that a site is informational does not by itself establish that it is a covered EAA service. For a borderline case, identify the service being offered and check the law transposed in each country where you offer it.
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The European Commission’s EAA overview and Directive (EU) 2019/882 explain the covered sectors and the EU-level framework. The EU names sectors including computers and operating systems, smartphones, digital television equipment, telephony, passenger transport, banking, e-books, and e-commerce. A business serving customers across borders should not assume that a conclusion drawn from one country’s rules settles every market.
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Which date matters?
Member States were required to transpose the Directive into national law by June 2022. Its general application date was 28 June 2025. That date does not mean every existing service is necessarily treated identically: the Directive has transition provisions, and the national law and the circumstances of the service matter. The European Commission’s overview and the Directive are useful starting points, but check the operative national rules for your service and markets.
What does accessibility mean for an online service?
Think in terms of whether people with different disabilities can complete real tasks, not merely whether a page receives a particular score. EU business guidance describes services that can be used by people with cognitive disabilities; work with assistive technologies such as screen readers and voice control; offer more than one way to input information or receive it; use consistent, logical navigation; allow sufficient time; and avoid visual effects that could trigger seizures.
For an online shop, walk through the whole task: find an item, understand its important terms, choose options, enter details, correct a mistake, pay, and get help. A barrier at any step can make the service difficult or impossible to use even if the home page appears accessible.
Is WCAG 2.1 AA enough for the EAA?
EN 301 549 is the EU technical reference identified by the Commission for web accessibility. The Commission says EN 301 549 v3.2.1 draws heavily from WCAG 2.1. A WCAG 2.1 Level AA evaluation is therefore a useful technical starting point for web content, but it is not safe to promise that the phrase “WCAG compliant” alone settles every EAA duty. The Act concerns service information and support as well as web content, and EN 301 549 includes requirements beyond web content.
The Commission standards guidance described EN 301 549 v3.2.1 as the harmonised standard underpinning EU web accessibility requirements and said WCAG 2.2 had not yet been adopted into a harmonised EN 301 549 version when that page was checked. Standards status can change; verify the current Commission reference and the applicable national law before setting a compliance target or making a public claim.
How to prepare your website: a practical plan
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Classify the service and the markets
Write down what customers can do through the site: buy products or services, book or buy tickets, access information, or use another service. Identify the countries where you offer it and the national laws transposing the EAA in those markets. Record why you consider the service covered or not covered, and have counsel review uncertain cases.
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Map the complete customer journey
Include the paths customers actually use, not just the public landing pages. For an online service, map discovery, search and filters, registration or guest checkout, product or service details, forms, consent and payment interfaces, confirmation, account management, and support. Include error and recovery paths—for example, what happens when a payment fails or a required field is missing.
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Audit shared components and content
Review the templates and components that recur across journeys: navigation, headings, links, buttons, forms, labels, error messages, and dialogs. Check that content remains understandable when text is resized, that images have appropriate alternatives, and that media, documents, time limits, and third-party components do not block essential tasks. Test keyboard-only operation and interaction with screen readers and voice control.
This checklist translates the EU guidance’s accessibility principles into practical website work; it is not a complete list of statutory criteria. Assess the standard and national requirements that apply to the service.
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Prioritize barriers by the task they prevent
Address issues that stop or seriously hinder people from discovering, understanding, selecting, buying, or getting help before lower-impact polish. Give each finding an owner, a due date, and a way to confirm the fix. Make accessibility acceptance criteria part of design-system components and release reviews so the same barrier is not reintroduced on every page.
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Test with more than an automated scan
Automated checks can repeatedly detect some machine-identifiable issues, but they do not establish that a person can complete a customer journey. Add manual keyboard checks and assistive-technology review, and include people with disabilities in representative testing. The Commission recommends involving people with disabilities; its SME VAT Rules portal accessibility statement describes a representative-sample approach using both manual and automated testing.
Special offer. See more information about Outbyte and uninstall instructions. Please review EULA and Privacy policy.Test across the browsers, devices, and assistive-technology combinations relevant to your audience. Keep the sample and methods documented. Neither a scanner result nor a small manual spot check guarantees that the full service is accessible.
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Fix the underlying service
Remediate the source: markup, content, design-system components, and service flows. The Commission says overlays that do not ensure the underlying site meets the standard’s detailed criteria are not an appropriate solution. An overlay may change how a page appears or behaves, but it does not replace correcting the barriers in the site itself.
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Document decisions and keep the service under review
Keep a record of your scope assessment, applicable standard and version, test sample and methods, findings, fixes, unresolved barriers, decisions, owners, and review dates. EU business guidance says service providers should describe how the service meets accessibility requirements and the technical and design procedures used.
Also provide a usable way for customers to report an accessibility barrier and route reports to someone able to act. Re-test when a release changes a journey, shared component, or third-party service. This is practical maintenance guidance, not a complete description of every national reporting duty.
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How should we test: automated checks or manual and user testing?
| Approach | Useful for | What it cannot establish alone |
|---|---|---|
| Automated checks | Repeatable checks for some detectable issues across pages or releases. | Whether people can complete the service’s real tasks, or whether all relevant barriers have been found. |
| Manual and user testing | Reviewing keyboard use, assistive-technology interaction, task flows, and barriers encountered by people with disabilities. | Complete coverage of every page, state, browser, and assistive-technology combination from a limited sample. |
Use both approaches for different purposes, and include people with disabilities in the process. A representative sample can make testing practical, but its limits should be recorded rather than presented as proof that every page and journey works for everyone.
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Do I need an accessibility statement?
Do not assume that the public-sector accessibility-statement format applies automatically to every private business covered by the EAA. The Web Accessibility Directive concerns websites and mobile apps of public-sector bodies; the EAA concerns specified products and services, including private-sector e-commerce. The regimes are related but are not interchangeable.
EU business guidance says service providers should describe how their service meets accessibility requirements and the technical and design procedures used. Check the EAA text and the national law that applies to your service to determine the exact documentation or publication duty. Regardless of format, maintain internal records of your assessment, tests, fixes, and unresolved barriers.
Are small businesses exempt?
Your Europe’s guidance describes a service-based microenterprise exemption for a business with fewer than 10 employees and annual turnover below €2 million. It also describes a possible disproportionate-burden claim, which requires evidence and review every five years. These are different grounds, not interchangeable shortcuts. Verify your status, the precise national-law process, and whether the exemption applies to the service before relying on it.
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Where does ScreenshotNeo fit in accessibility work?
ScreenshotNeo is a website screenshot API and MCP server. A screenshot can help a team inspect a rendered page or compare visual states, but it cannot establish keyboard access, screen-reader behavior, or EAA compliance. Treat it as one visual QA aid alongside manual checks and testing with people with disabilities—not as an accessibility audit or a substitute for fixing the site.
Or skip the browser setup:
For a visual capture, make one GET request. Replace the example URL with the page you want to inspect. See the ScreenshotNeo API documentation for request options.
curl -G "https://api.screenshotneo.com/v1/shot" -d access_key=YOUR_API_KEY --data-urlencode url=https://stripe.com -o shot.webpScreenshotNeo accepts cookie or consent banners as a visitor and removes more than 60 known consent platforms, newsletter popups, and chat widgets before capture; each of those steps can be turned off. Bot checks or CAPTCHAs, blank pages, timeouts, failed loads, and cache hits cost nothing, and the response identifies the page verdict and billing status in headers. Its MCP server provides take_screenshot, get_page_info, and capture_pdf for AI agents and MCP clients. The Free plan includes 1,000 screenshots per month with no card; paid plans start at $5 for 3,000 shots.
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