Does the European Accessibility Act apply to your business?

The fast version: find your situation

If one of these describes you, that is your answer. The five questions below explain the reasoning, and cover the cases this table cannot.

Your situation	Status	What that means
No EU consumers at all	Out of scope	The Act does not reach you. Other accessibility law in your own market still might.
You sell only to other businesses	Out of scope	A genuine exclusion — but check for a consumer-facing edge first. See question 1.
Nothing a customer touches is digital	Out of scope	The Act’s digital requirements do not apply. See question 2.
Under 10 staff, and under €2m turnover or balance sheet — providing services	Exempt	The microenterprise exemption. Read question 3 before relying on it — it is commonly stated wrongly.
Under 10 staff, but you make or distribute a covered product	In scope	Not exempt. Lighter documentation obligations, which is a different thing.
10 or more staff, EU consumers, anything they use is digital	In scope	Where most mid-sized businesses land. Go to what your answers mean.
In scope, and the product has only ever been scanned	In scope	A scan is not an evaluation and will not support a conformance claim. See question 5.

1. Do you offer a service or product to consumers in the EU?

If no — you can stop here. The Act covers products and services offered to consumers in the EU market. If you sell only to businesses, and only outside the EU, it does not reach you. Note the two halves of that: selling business-to-business is a genuine exclusion, but selling into the EU from outside it is not.

Before you settle on B2B, check it properly. A great many B2B companies have a consumer-facing edge they have stopped noticing: a self-serve sign-up, a public pricing page with a checkout, a support portal an individual uses. We wrote about the B2B assumption and why it is worth checking.

If yes, continue. It does not matter where you are established. A business in the United States selling to consumers in Ireland is in scope, in the same way GDPR reaches them.

2. Is any part of that delivered digitally?

A website, an app, a booking flow, a quote journey, an account area, a self-service terminal, an e-book, a PDF you send customers.

If no — a service delivered entirely in person, with no digital component a consumer uses — the Act’s digital requirements largely do not apply to you. Other accessibility law still might.

If yes, continue. This is where most businesses find themselves in scope without having realised it. The obligation attaches to the consumer-facing journey, not to whether you consider yourself a technology company.

3. Are you a microenterprise?

The microenterprise exemption is the one real, blanket exemption in the Act, and it is worth getting exactly right. A microenterprise employs fewer than 10 people, and has either an annual turnover of no more than €2 million or an annual balance sheet total of no more than €2 million.

Read that structure carefully, because it is commonly stated wrongly. The headcount test and the financial test both have to be satisfied — but the financial test can be met on either turnover or balance sheet. A business with eight staff and €2.5m turnover but a €1.8m balance sheet still qualifies.

If you qualify: microenterprises providing services are exempt from the Act’s service accessibility obligations. If you manufacture or distribute a covered product, you are not exempt — you have lighter documentation obligations, which is a different thing.

Two things worth knowing before you rely on it. There is no grace period: the day you take on a tenth employee, the exemption is gone, for anything new you put on the market. And if you have received funding specifically for accessibility improvement, it does not apply.

If you do not qualify, continue. If you are in the 51 to 500 range with EU consumers, you are almost certainly in scope.

The CCPC, which is the Irish market surveillance authority, publishes its own guidance for microenterprises. If you are close to the threshold, that is the authoritative place to check.

4. Which sector are you in? (This changes who, not whether)

Some sectors are named explicitly, which usually means a specific regulator and closer attention: banking and payment services, e-commerce, transport, telecoms, e-books, and audiovisual media services. Two more worth naming because they are where we see the most barriers in practice: travel and booking, and SaaS.

This question does not change whether the Act applies to you. It changes which regulator would deal with a complaint, and how closely you are likely to be looked at. If you are not on that list but you sell to consumers digitally, e-commerce is the catch-all that most likely applies.

5. Has your product actually been evaluated — or only scanned?

This is the question that separates businesses who think they are fine from businesses who are.

An automated scan finds a minority of barriers and cannot test whether a journey can be completed at all.

If it has only been scanned: that is not an evaluation, and it will not support a conformance claim if anyone asks. “We ran a tool and it looked mostly green” is the most common answer we hear, and it is the one that leaves a business most exposed without knowing it.

If a real evaluation has been done: you will have a dated report naming what was tested, with what assistive technology, and where it falls short. If you cannot lay hands on that document, treat it as not done.

Related

• Who needs an accessibility statement, and what the law requires
• EAA compliance in Ireland — the authority map and director liability
• What we do, and what each step costs