As of June 2025, the European Accessibility Act applies across the EU, and it quietly pulls a lot of everyday digital products into scope. Websites, mobile apps, e-commerce, online banking, ticketing, e-books. If you sell to customers in the EU, this is no longer a niche compliance footnote. It is the baseline.
What it actually asks for
Underneath the legal language, the Act asks for the things good design has always asked for. Content that is perceivable, operable, understandable and robust. In practice that means proper structure and headings, text that can be resized without the layout falling apart, enough colour contrast to read comfortably, full keyboard operation for people who cannot use a mouse, captions and transcripts for media, and forms that explain their own errors.
None of it is exotic. It maps closely to the WCAG guidelines, which have been around for years. The Act simply gives them teeth in a new set of places.
Why most sites are behind
The sites scrambling now are the ones that treated accessibility as a final-week job for years. They bolted it on after the design was signed off, found it awkward and expensive to retrofit, did the minimum, and moved on. The Act rewards the opposite habit. Build it in from the first line of code and it costs almost nothing extra. Leave it to the end and you pay for it twice.
What to do about it
Start by finding out where you actually stand, rather than guessing. A proper audit tells you what passes, what fails, and which failures matter most. From there it is a prioritised list, not a panic. Fix the things that lock people out entirely first, then the friction, then the polish.
If you are not sure where to begin, that is what a Second Look is for. We tell you the truth about your site in plain language, ranked by what matters, with the things you can fix yourself clearly marked as such.