European Accessibility Act One Year On Shows Web Gaps

One year after the European Accessibility Act (EAA) took effect on June 28, 2025, new data from AudioEye’s 2026 Digital Accessibility Index reveals that EU websites still lag behind their US counterparts. The study scanned more than 166,000 pages across seven industries and found EU sites average 25% more accessibility issues per page. Gaps are especially large in professional services (44% more issues), public and nonprofit organisations (42% higher), and industrial and manufacturing sites (41% behind). The tech sector is the only area where EU companies match US firms, driven by procurement standards and B2B sales cycles.

The most common WCAG failures—missing image alt text, inaccessible link labels, unlabeled buttons and form fields, insufficient colour contrast, and missing keyboard‑skip navigation—account for 40% of all detected problems worldwide and are frequent sources of litigation. Enforcement of the EAA is beginning across EU member states with varied mechanisms and timelines, mirroring the GDPR rollout. Within days of the deadline, French disability organisations issued formal legal notices to several major retailers, marking the first concrete enforcement actions, though no headline fines have yet been imposed.