ByAhsan NadeemLead Full-Stack Engineer
Website accessibility requirements are now law for many businesses. The European Accessibility Act has covered key services sold to EU consumers since June 2025, more than 3,000 ADA website lawsuits reached US federal courts in 2025, and almost every website still fails basic tests.
This guide covers what each rule requires, what most sites get wrong, why overlay widgets won't make you compliant, and a five-step plan to fix your site.
How many websites fail accessibility tests?
Every year, WebAIM tests the home pages of the top one million websites. Its February 2026 report found:
- 95.9% of home pages had detectable failures against WCAG 2, the international accessibility standard, the first time the figure got worse in six years;
- an average of 56.1 errors per page;
- the most common problems: low-contrast text (83.9% of pages), images without alternative text (53.1%), form fields without labels (51%), empty links (46.3%) and empty buttons (30.6%).
Most of these failures are basic and fixable. You don't need a research lab, just someone to go through the site carefully.
Our web development service builds to WCAG 2.2 AA by default, with keyboard support and contrast checked automatically.
European Accessibility Act: what it requires of websites
The European Accessibility Act (EAA) has applied since 28 June 2025. It covers products and services sold to consumers in the EU, including:
- e-commerce (online shops and checkout);
- banking and financial services;
- passenger transport services (tickets, booking, travel information);
- e-books and their reading software;
- electronic communications.
What it means for your business:
- It applies outside the EU if you sell these services to EU consumers.
- Micro-enterprises are exempt for services: fewer than 10 employees and an annual turnover or balance sheet of no more than €2 million.
- The technical benchmark is the European standard EN 301 549, which incorporates WCAG 2.1 Level AA for web content.
- Enforcement is national, and penalties differ by country.
Courts have started to rule. In June 2026, a court in Caen, France ordered Carrefour to bring its online grocery site and app into full conformity within six months, or pay a penalty of €500 a day.
Using Carrefour's own audit (about 71% conformity), the court assessed the site criterion by criterion and made clear that "partly accessible" is not enough. It was an interim ruling and other cases have gone differently, but the direction is clear.
ADA website compliance in the United States
The US has no single accessibility law for private websites, but courts widely apply the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to them. Law firm Seyfarth Shaw counted 3,117 website accessibility lawsuits in federal courts in 2025, up 27% on 2024, with more filed in state courts.
Deadlines for state and local government websites
For state and local governments, a 2024 Department of Justice rule set WCAG 2.1 Level AA as the required standard. In April 2026, the DOJ extended the compliance dates by a year: entities serving 50,000 or more people now have until 26 April 2027, and smaller ones until 26 April 2028. The requirements themselves didn't change.
What's new in WCAG 2.2
WCAG 2.2, the current version, became a W3C Recommendation in October 2023. It keeps everything from 2.1 and adds criteria that matter most on phones and for people with cognitive or motor disabilities, including:
- Focus not obscured: sticky headers and cookie banners mustn't hide the element a keyboard user is on.
- Target size: buttons and links at least 24 by 24 CSS pixels, or with enough space around them.
- Dragging movements: anything done by dragging needs a simple alternative, such as tapping.
- Consistent help: contact details or help links in the same place on every page.
- Redundant entry: don't make people type the same information twice in one process.
- Accessible authentication: logins mustn't rely on memorising or transcribing (puzzles, retyping codes) without an alternative such as paste or a password manager.
The laws still mostly reference WCAG 2.1 AA, but 2.2 AA is the sensible target: it covers 2.1 and future-proofs the site.
Do accessibility overlays make a site compliant?
No. Overlay widgets promise compliance with one line of code: a toolbar that changes fonts and colours and claims to fix problems automatically. The evidence is against them:
- In 2025, the US Federal Trade Commission finalised an order requiring overlay provider accessiBe to pay $1 million over claims that its AI tool could make any website WCAG compliant, claims the FTC called false, misleading or unsubstantiated.
- Overlays can't fix the underlying code: missing labels, broken keyboard navigation and inaccessible checkouts stay broken.
- Many disabled users and accessibility experts dislike them, because they can interfere with the screen readers and settings people already use.
A widget is not a compliance strategy. Fixing the site is.
How to meet website accessibility requirements: a five-step plan
Step 1: automated accessibility scan (one day)
Run a free checker such as WAVE or axe on your key pages: home, product or service pages, contact form, checkout or booking. Automated tools catch the obvious issues, such as contrast, missing alt text and missing labels, but miss many others.
Step 2: keyboard and screen-reader test (one to three days)
Put the mouse away and complete your main task (buy, book, enquire) with only the keyboard. Then repeat it with a screen reader: NVDA on Windows, VoiceOver on Mac and iPhone. This finds the problems that matter most, the ones tools miss.
Step 3: fix by impact
- Anything that blocks a purchase, booking or enquiry.
- Forms: labels, error messages, required-field hints.
- Navigation and keyboard focus.
- Contrast and text alternatives across the site.
Step 4: build accessibility into development
- Add automated accessibility checks to development so new pages don't regress.
- Use accessible, properly labelled components (buttons, inputs, dialogs) rather than building your own.
- Publish an accessibility statement: the standard you aim for, known issues and how to contact you. In the EU this is expected for covered services.
Step 5: retest periodically
Content changes. Re-scan monthly and repeat the manual test whenever you redesign a key flow. If a redesign also moves URLs, run through our website migration SEO checklist at the same time.
Frequently asked questions
Does the European Accessibility Act apply to companies outside the EU?
Yes, if they sell covered services such as e-commerce, banking or passenger transport to EU consumers. Micro-enterprises (under 10 employees and no more than €2 million turnover or balance sheet) are exempt for services.
Which WCAG level do the laws require?
WCAG 2.1 Level AA, both in the EAA's standard (EN 301 549) and in the US DOJ rule for state and local governments. WCAG 2.2 AA covers 2.1 too, so it's the sensible target for new work.
Do accessibility overlays make a website ADA or EAA compliant?
No. Overlays can't fix the underlying code, such as missing form labels or broken keyboard navigation, and in 2025 the US FTC ordered accessiBe to pay $1 million over claims that its tool could make any website WCAG compliant.
The bottom line
Nearly every site has accessibility work to do, and the fixes are mostly unglamorous: contrast, labels, keyboard support, clear forms.
Skip the overlay and fix the site properly. It will work better for everyone, and with our guide to improving Core Web Vitals it can be faster too.
Not sure where your site stands? Book a free consultation with our web development team and we'll go through your key pages with you.
Sources
- WebAIM, "The WebAIM Million: 2026 report": https://webaim.org/projects/million/
- Directive (EU) 2019/882, the European Accessibility Act (EUR-Lex): https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2019/882/oj
- Taylor Wessing, "The EAA and BFSG: recap and update" (June 2026), covering the Carrefour ruling: https://www.taylorwessing.com/en/insights-and-events/insights/2026/06/the-eaa-and-bfsg-recap-and-update
- Reed Smith, "DOJ extends digital accessibility compliance dates under Title II of the ADA" (April 2026): https://www.reedsmith.com/articles/doj-extends-digital-accessibility-compliance-dates-under-title-ii-of-the-ada/
- Seyfarth Shaw, ADA Title III blog, "Federal Court Website Accessibility Lawsuit Filings Bounce Back in 2025" (March 2026): https://www.adatitleiii.com/2026/03/federal-court-website-accessibility-lawsuit-filings-bounce-back-in-2025/
- W3C, "What's New in WCAG 2.2": https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/new-in-22/
- Data Privacy + Security Insider, "FTC settles with accessiBe for misleading statements about WCAG compliance" (April 2025): https://www.dataprivacyandsecurityinsider.com/2025/04/ftc-settles-with-accessibe-for-misleading-statements-about-wcag-compliance/
