Ensure Compliance with the European Accessibility Act (EAA) Audit

Is Your Business Ready for the European Accessibility Act?

Our Solution

The European Accessibility Act (EAA) requires all businesses selling products or services in the EU to meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA accessibility standards across their websites, mobile applications, and digital services by 28 June 2025. Companies that fail to comply by that date face enforcement actions by national regulatory authorities, fines determined by each EU member state’s transposition legislation, and — in markets like Germany and the Netherlands — private litigation from accessibility advocacy organizations.

SEOBRO.Agency’s EAA Compliance Audit identifies every accessibility barrier on your digital properties, maps each issue to its specific WCAG 2.1 success criterion, prioritizes fixes by compliance risk and implementation effort, and provides your development team with actionable remediation instructions — delivered within 10 business days of audit commencement.

What the EAA Requires and Who It Applies To

The EAA applies to private-sector businesses operating in EU member states across four categories: e-commerce platforms selling to EU consumers, banking and financial service providers, transport service operators, and digital media and telecommunications services. Public sector websites have been subject to the Web Accessibility Directive since 2018 — the EAA extends equivalent obligations to the private sector for the first time.

Compliance is evaluated against WCAG 2.1 Level AA, which covers 50 success criteria organized across four principles: Perceivable (content must be presentable to users regardless of sensory ability), Operable (interface components must be navigable without a mouse), Understandable (content and operation must be comprehensible), and Robust (content must be interpretable by current and future assistive technologies including screen readers, voice control software, and braille displays).

Non-compliance penalties vary by member state. Under Germany’s Barrierefreiheitsstärkungsgesetz (BFSG), fines reach up to €100,000 per violation. Under France’s transposition legislation, penalties start at €25,000 for first offences. In addition to regulatory fines, non-compliant businesses risk exclusion from public procurement processes in member states that require EAA compliance as a contract condition.

What SEOBRO.Agency's EAA Compliance Audit Covers

Our audit evaluates your digital properties across five compliance layers:

Automated accessibility scan
We run your website through industry-standard automated testing tools — Axe, WAVE, and Lighthouse Accessibility — identifying WCAG 2.1 violations detectable through code analysis. Automated tools reliably identify approximately 30–40% of total accessibility issues, covering missing alt text, insufficient color contrast ratios (WCAG requires a minimum 4.5:1 ratio for normal text), absent form labels, and missing ARIA landmarks.

Manual expert review
The remaining 60–70% of accessibility barriers require human evaluation — keyboard navigation testing, screen reader compatibility testing using NVDA and VoiceOver, cognitive load assessment, and focus indicator verification. Our auditors test every interactive element on your highest-traffic pages against each applicable WCAG 2.1 Level AA success criterion, documenting failures with screenshot evidence and specific criterion references.

PDF and document accessibility
Downloadable documents — terms and conditions, product manuals, application forms — fall within EAA scope if they are essential to accessing your service. We audit PDF documents against PDF/UA (ISO 14289) standards, identifying missing document structure tags, absent reading order definitions, and form fields without accessible labels.

Compliance gap report with prioritized remediation roadmap
You receive a structured report mapping every identified issue to its WCAG 2.1 success criterion, its EAA compliance risk level (critical, high, medium, low), and its estimated development effort to fix (hours). Issues are sequenced by compliance risk first and implementation effort second, so your development team addresses the highest-risk barriers before the June 2025 deadline without wasting sprint capacity on low-risk cosmetic issues.

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Who Needs an EAA Compliance Audit

E-commerce platforms selling physical or digital products to EU consumers are directly in scope. A checkout flow that is not operable by keyboard alone — meaning a visually impaired user cannot complete a purchase using only a screen reader and keyboard — constitutes a WCAG 2.1 Level AA failure under Success Criterion 2.1.1 and an EAA non-compliance that regulators can act on from June 2025.

Financial services and banking providers face the strictest enforcement timeline, as they were already subject to EN 301 549 accessibility requirements under the Payment Services Directive. The EAA extends and formalizes these obligations, requiring accessible online banking interfaces, accessible PDF statements, and accessible customer service channels.

SaaS and digital service providers with EU customers are in scope if their service is considered essential to consumers’ participation in digital society — a definition that regulators are interpreting broadly in early enforcement guidance.

Any business that has not conducted an accessibility audit in the past 12 months is likely non-compliant. WCAG 2.1 was published in 2018, but the majority of websites audited by our team in 2024 contained an average of 47 automatically detectable accessibility errors per page — meaning most businesses are starting from a significant compliance deficit with less than six months to remediate.

The SEO and Performance Case for Accessibility

EAA compliance and SEO performance share the same technical foundations. Accessibility improvements that satisfy WCAG 2.1 requirements directly improve the signals Google uses to evaluate page quality:

Proper heading hierarchy (WCAG 1.3.1) improves Google’s ability to understand page structure and extract featured snippet content. Descriptive alt text on images (WCAG 1.1.1) provides Google Images with indexable content and improves passage-level relevance for image-heavy pages. Sufficient color contrast and readable font sizing reduce bounce rates by improving readability for all users — including the estimated 8% of men with color vision deficiency who may abandon pages with low-contrast text. Keyboard-navigable interfaces and logical tab order improve Core Web Vitals Interaction to Next Paint (INP) scores, which Google uses as a ranking signal in competitive results.

For e-commerce clients specifically, accessible checkout flows reduce cart abandonment among the 135 million EU residents with some form of disability — a market segment that Nielsen Norman Group estimates controls €1.3 trillion in annual discretionary spending across the EU.

Our EAA Audit Process and Timeline

Days 1–2: Automated scanning of all pages and user flows, PDF document collection, and mobile application build delivery.
Days 3–7: Manual expert review of highest-traffic pages, checkout and conversion flows, forms, and interactive components. Screen reader testing on NVDA (Windows) and VoiceOver (iOS and macOS).
Days 8–9: Report compilation — issue mapping to WCAG criteria, compliance risk classification, developer remediation instructions with code examples where applicable.
Day 10: Report delivery and 60-minute remediation briefing call with your development team, covering prioritization sequence, quick wins achievable within 30 days, and structural changes requiring longer implementation timelines.
Ongoing monitoring (optional): Monthly automated re-scans tracking remediation progress against the original issue list, with quarterly manual review updates as your site content changes.

Use Cases of an EAA Compliance Audit

E-commerce Platforms: Ensure online stores are accessible, providing all customers with a smooth shopping experience.
Public Sector Websites: Meet stringent regulatory requirements while offering equal access to digital public services.
Corporate and Business Websites: Bolster your company’s image by demonstrating a commitment to user-centric design and inclusivity.
Digital Service Providers: Deliver accessible digital solutions that cater to a diverse range of users, driving higher engagement and satisfaction.

Contact SEOBRO.Agency for an EAA Compliance Audit

The June 2025 EAA enforcement deadline gives businesses operating in the EU a fixed and non-negotiable compliance timeline. An audit completed now provides a minimum of three to four months for remediation before enforcement begins — sufficient time to address critical barriers if development work starts promptly. An audit completed in May 2025 leaves four to six weeks for remediation, which is insufficient for businesses with significant accessibility deficits.
Contact SEOBRO.Agency today with your website URL and — if applicable — your mobile application platform (iOS/Android). We will confirm audit scope, timeline, and pricing within 24 hours.