Digital accessibility for businesses

Web accessibility is a set of guidelines and best practices that allow everyone, including people with physical, visual, hearing or cognitive disabilities, to navigate and use websites and apps easily. For example, making a website accessible means ensuring it can be used by people with visual impairments, such as people with low vision or who are blind, or by people with motor impairments who navigate using alternative tools such as a keyboard.

Since June 28, 2025, the requirement applies to companies that use a website or app to enter into contracts with consumers, such as e-commerce, bookings or quote requests, and to those offering banking, passenger transport, telecommunications, e-book or audiovisual content services. Service microenterprises (fewer than 10 employees and revenue or balance sheet total up to €2 million) are exempt.

It depends on what it lets people do. If it is purely informational, generally not. If it allows a consumer to request a quote, book or buy, it falls under e-commerce services, which the directive defines as online services requested by a consumer “with a view to concluding a consumer contract”. If in doubt, the free check tells you within an hour whether the law applies to you.

If you are covered by the requirement, AgID can ask you to comply and impose fines from €5,000 to €40,000, and from €2,500 to €30,000 if you don’t follow its requests. For companies with average revenue above €500 million, fines can reach 5% of revenue. If you are not covered, you don’t risk fines, but you lose customers who can’t use your website.

The first step is an automated check of your home page: we do it for free and the report arrives within an hour. To know whether the whole website complies, you need a full audit: automated tools plus a manual check of every WCAG 2.2 AA criterion, on every page and on user flows such as the cart and forms.

The cost of making a website accessible varies with the complexity of the website and the number of changes needed. It depends on the website: in the example on this page, a 5-page brochure website, compliance costs €5,500. You can get the exact estimate for your website in 2 minutes with the calculator above, without leaving your contact details; the detailed, itemized quote arrives within 48 hours.

Many people fear that making a website accessible means significantly altering its look or visual identity. In reality, in most cases it doesn’t. Often all it takes is targeted technical work on the website’s code, adding alt text to images and videos, or small adjustments to colors and text sizes. The end result is a website that keeps its look intact but can be used by a wider audience.

The time needed varies with the size and complexity of the website. Generally, for medium-sized websites, the complete process takes 2 to 6 weeks. During this period, our team works closely with you to make sure all the changes are effective and comply with the standards set by European law.

Often yes, indirectly. Properly ordered headings, alt text, descriptive links and lightweight pages help both screen reader users and Google understand the website. Accessibility is not a direct ranking factor, but clear, fast websites tend to rank better.

Public oversight is the responsibility of AgID, the supervisory authority; we carry out the technical verification: an audit with technical tools and a manual check of every page, criterion by criterion against the WCAG 2.2 AA guidelines. Once the verification is passed, we issue the conformance certificate and the accessibility statement to publish on the website. If the website doesn’t pass the audit after our work, we fix it for free.

Under the European Accessibility Act there are two: complying with the European standard EN 301 549, which for websites and apps corresponds to WCAG 2.1 level AA (we work to 2.2, which includes it), and stating in your general terms and conditions, or an equivalent document, how the service meets the accessibility requirements. The statement to be updated by September 23 is instead an obligation for the Public Administration and for companies with revenue above €500 million.

Making a website accessible is not a one-off job: it’s important to maintain the level of accessibility you’ve reached over time. To do so, we offer your in-house team dedicated training sessions and simple guidelines that help keep the accessibility standards consistently in place. Our team also remains available to provide ongoing support, helping to solve any future issue or need.