This guide explains what the European Accessibility Act, the UK Equality Act and the US ADA actually say about small business websites, who is exempt, and which fixes a typical site needs. It ends with a practical test you can run yourself in an afternoon and a straight answer on accessibility overlay widgets.
Since 28 June 2025 the European Accessibility Act covers e-commerce and some other consumer services sold in the EU, including by UK and US firms. Microenterprises providing services (fewer than 10 staff and turnover or balance sheet of EUR 2 million or less) are exempt. The UK and US have no identical rule for private sites, but both expect accessible services. Aim for WCAG 2.2 AA and skip overlay widgets.
Why accessibility is on small business owners' desks now
Three things moved in the last 15 months, and they moved in different directions, which is why the advice online is so confused.
In the EU, the European Accessibility Act (Directive (EU) 2019/882) started applying to services provided to consumers after 28 June 2025. Then, in September 2026, the European standard used to show compliance was updated. Ireland's National Disability Authority reports that EN 301 549 V4.1.1 was published on 2 September 2026 and moves its web baseline from WCAG 2.1 to WCAG 2.2.
In the US, the Department of Justice pushed back the deadlines for its web rule for state and local governments by a year. That rule does not cover private businesses, but it gets quoted in sales emails as if it does.
In the UK, the Equality and Human Rights Commission's 2026 draft Code of Practice for services was laid before Parliament and says in plain words that the duty "also applies to the provision of services on a website".
None of this means you need to panic. It does mean that "we'll look at accessibility later" has stopped being a neutral choice for anyone who sells online. What follows is what each official source says. Laws apply differently to each business, so check your own case with a lawyer or the relevant authority.
Does the European Accessibility Act apply to your website?
The EAA doesn't cover every website. It lists specific products and services. For a small business, the one that matters is almost always e-commerce services. The Directive also covers consumer banking, e-books, passenger transport services, electronic communications and access to audiovisual media, but few small studios, shops or trades fall into those.
What counts as an e-commerce service
The Directive defines e-commerce services as "a service provided at a distance, through websites and mobile device-based services, by electronic means and at the individual request of a consumer, with a view to concluding a consumer contract." Two parts of that sentence do most of the work.
- "Consumer" means a private person buying for non-business purposes. A B2B supplier selling only to trade accounts is in a different position from a shop selling to the public.
- "With a view to concluding a consumer contract" points at sites where the customer buys, books or subscribes online. An online store with a checkout clearly fits. A brochure site where people fill in a contact form and you quote later is less clear, and that's exactly the kind of question to put to a lawyer in your market.
The microenterprise exemption
This is the part most small businesses care about. Article 4(5) says: "The requirements and obligations of this Directive shall not apply to microenterprises providing services within the scope of this Directive."
Article 3 defines a microenterprise as "an enterprise which employs fewer than 10 persons and which has an annual turnover not exceeding EUR 2 million or an annual balance sheet total not exceeding EUR 2 million." You need both parts: under 10 staff, and one of the two financial figures at EUR 2 million or less.
Say a family-run online tea shop in Lisbon has six staff and EUR 900,000 turnover. It's a microenterprise, so the EAA's service obligations don't apply to its website. A homeware brand with 14 staff and the same turnover is not a microenterprise, even though it's still a small business in everyday terms.
Two caveats. The exemption covers services only; microenterprises that make or import covered products (a hardware device, for example) have different rules. And the Directive still encourages microenterprises to comply voluntarily, because the customers who can't use an inaccessible checkout are the same people whether a law covers you or not.
Applies to services provided to consumers after 28 June 2025. Not legal advice; check your own case. Source: Directive (EU) 2019/882, Articles 2, 3 and 4, EUR-Lex.
If you're outside the EU
The Directive defines a service provider as "any natural or legal person who provides a service on the Union market or makes offers to provide such a service to consumers in the Union." Nothing in that wording limits it to companies registered in the EU. A UK or US online store that ships to EU consumers and isn't a microenterprise should assume the EAA applies to the store it shows those customers. Each member state enforces it through its own national law, so procedures and penalties differ from country to country.
The European Commission's EAA page lists the covered products and services and notes that member states had to write the Act into national law by June 2022.
What the UK and US rules say for private businesses
United Kingdom
The UK regulations people quote most often, which require WCAG 2.2 AA and an accessibility statement, apply to public sector bodies. The gov.uk guidance on those regulations says so directly. They don't apply to a private shop or consultancy.
Private businesses are covered by the Equality Act 2010 instead. Section 20 sets out the duty to make reasonable adjustments, and subsection (6) says that where the duty relates to information, reasonable steps include making sure the information "is provided in an accessible format." The government's quick start guide for service providers adds that service providers "must think ahead and take steps to address barriers that impede disabled people." There's no fixed technical standard for private sites, so WCAG 2.2 AA is the sensible yardstick.
United States
For businesses open to the public (Title III of the ADA), the Department of Justice's web accessibility guidance on ada.gov says the ADA applies to goods and services "including those offered on the web." It also says the Department "does not have a regulation setting out detailed standards," and that businesses can choose how they make their online offering accessible, pointing to WCAG and the Section 508 Standards as helpful references.
The 2024 DOJ web rule is a separate thing. It covers state and local governments under Title II and uses WCAG 2.1 AA. An interim final rule published on 20 April 2026 moved its compliance dates. If a vendor tells your private business it has a "2027 ADA deadline", they're quoting a rule that isn't about you.
| Market | Main rule for private business sites | Named technical standard | Small business carve-out |
|---|---|---|---|
| EU | European Accessibility Act, for covered services such as e-commerce to consumers | EN 301 549 (which references WCAG) | Microenterprises providing services are exempt |
| UK | Equality Act 2010, reasonable adjustments duty for service providers | None for private sites (public sector uses WCAG 2.2 AA) | No size exemption; what's "reasonable" depends on the business |
| US | ADA Title III for public accommodations, per DOJ guidance | None in regulation for businesses; DOJ points to WCAG | None stated in the DOJ guidance |
| US (public bodies only) | ADA Title II web rule | WCAG 2.1 AA | Deadlines 26 April 2027 (population 50,000 or more) and 26 April 2028 (smaller entities and special districts) |
Swipe sideways to see the whole table.
Rules as of September 2026.
Which standard to build to
WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) is the W3C's standard for accessible web content. Each rule in it is called a "success criterion" and has a number, a name and a level: A, AA or AAA. When people say "WCAG AA", they mean meeting every A and AA criterion.
WCAG 2.2 was published on 5 October 2023 and adds nine success criteria to 2.1, six of them at level A or AA. W3C says the 2.0 and 2.1 criteria are essentially the same in 2.2, with one exception (the old Parsing criterion was removed). Build to 2.2 AA and you cover 2.1 AA as well.
EN 301 549 is the European standard for accessibility of ICT products and services. For websites, it points to WCAG. The new V4.1.1 references WCAG 2.2 Level AA, but according to the National Disability Authority it only becomes the version that gives a legal "presumption of conformity" with the EAA once the Commission cites it in the Official Journal. Until then, V3.2.1 (based on WCAG 2.1) is the reference. For a small business, the practical answer doesn't change: WCAG 2.2 AA satisfies both.
Build to WCAG 2.2 AA once and you've covered the EU, the UK and the US in a single piece of work.
The fixes most small business sites actually need
You don't need to read all of WCAG to make real progress. The same few problems show up on almost every site. WebAIM tests the home pages of the top one million websites every year, and the 2026 WebAIM Million report found detectable WCAG failures on 95.9% of them. Low contrast text appeared on 83.9% of home pages, missing image alt text on 53.1% and missing form labels on 51%.
Here's what to check, with the WCAG 2.2 success criteria each fix maps to.
Alt text on images (1.1.1 Non-text Content, level A)
Every meaningful image needs a text alternative that does the same job. On a product photo, that's what the product is ("Hand-thrown stoneware mug, 350 ml, sage glaze"), not "IMG_4432". Decorative images, like a background texture, should have empty alt text so screen readers skip them. In WordPress, you set this in the Media Library under "Alternative Text".
Colour contrast (1.4.3 Contrast Minimum, level AA)
Body text needs a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 against its background. Large text needs 3:1. Light grey text on white is the usual offender, followed by white text on a pale brand colour. Buttons, input borders and icons need 3:1 against what's next to them under 1.4.11 Non-text Contrast. This is often a two-hour fix in a theme's colour settings.
Keyboard use (2.1.1 Keyboard, level A)
Everything you can do with a mouse must work with a keyboard: menus, sliders, popups, the cart, the checkout. Drop-down menus that only open on hover and cookie banners that trap the cursor are the common failures.
Visible focus (2.4.7 Focus Visible, level AA, and 2.4.11 Focus Not Obscured, level AA)
When someone tabs through your page, they need to see where they are. Many themes remove the focus outline because a designer thought it looked untidy. Put it back. WCAG 2.2 also says a focused item must not be completely hidden by your own content, which catches sticky headers and chat bubbles that cover the link someone just tabbed to.
Form labels (3.3.2 Labels or Instructions, level A)
Every field needs a visible label. Placeholder text inside the box that vanishes when you start typing doesn't count as a label in practice. Error messages should say what went wrong in words ("Enter a phone number with the country code"), not only by turning the border red.
Captions (1.2.2 Captions Prerecorded, level A)
Prerecorded videos with sound need captions. YouTube's automatic captions are a start, but check and correct them, especially product names and prices.
Target size (2.5.8 Target Size Minimum, level AA)
New in WCAG 2.2: clickable targets should be at least 24 by 24 CSS pixels, or spaced so a 24 pixel circle centred on each doesn't overlap its neighbours. Links inside a sentence are exempt. Tiny social icons in the footer and the "x" on a popup are the usual problems.
Source: W3C, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2.
On WordPress or Shopify, most of these issues live in the theme: the header, the product template, the contact form. Fixing a template fixes every page that uses it, so start there before editing individual pages.
How to test your own site in an afternoon
Free tools find a lot, but not everything. Lighthouse's own documentation lists manual checks, including keyboard use and focus handling, that don't affect its accessibility score. A score of 100 means the automated checks passed, nothing more. Use tools to find the obvious problems, then test by hand.
- Pick five pages: home, one service or product page, the contact page, the cart, and one blog post.
- Run each through WAVE from WebAIM (there are Chrome, Firefox and Edge extensions). Write down every red error and every contrast error.
- Open Chrome DevTools, go to the Lighthouse tab, tick only "Accessibility" and run it on the same pages. Lighthouse also covers speed, which is worth a look while you're there; our guide to fixing a slow website explains what those numbers mean.
- Put the mouse away. Press Tab from the top of each page and try to open the menu, add a product to the cart and send the contact form. Note anywhere the focus disappears or gets stuck.
- Zoom the browser to 200% and check nothing overlaps or gets cut off.
- Turn on captions for every video and read them.
- Sort your list by how many pages each issue affects, and fix the templates first.
If you want other tools, W3C keeps a list of web accessibility evaluation tools, with the note that W3C doesn't endorse specific products.
Do accessibility overlay widgets work?
No. An overlay is a script you paste into your site that adds a floating accessibility button and claims to fix problems automatically with AI. They're sold hard, usually on a monthly subscription, and usually with the promise of instant compliance.
In January 2025 the US Federal Trade Commission ordered accessiBe to pay $1 million over claims that its accessWidget product could make any website WCAG-compliant. The FTC also alleged the company formatted third-party articles and reviews to look independent without disclosing its connections to them. The FTC approved the final order in April 2025, which bars the company from claiming its automated products make sites WCAG-compliant without evidence.
The Overlay Fact Sheet, signed by more than a thousand accessibility practitioners and people with disabilities, states that "no overlay product on the market can cause a website to become fully compliant with any existing accessibility standard." That matches what you'd expect from the fixes above. A script can't know what your product photo shows, can't rewrite a confusing checkout, and can't make a custom menu behave for a keyboard user when the underlying code doesn't.
Many screen reader users already have their own tools set up exactly how they like them. A second toolbar on top of that is more to fight with, not less. Put the subscription money into fixing the templates instead. It's a one-time cost for most of the work, and the fix stays when you cancel.
Common mistakes
- Assuming "small" means exempt. The EAA exemption is for microenterprises as defined, not for small businesses in general, and neither the UK nor the US guidance cited above mentions one.
- Treating a Lighthouse score of 100 as proof of compliance.
- Stuffing keywords into alt text. Alt text is for people who can't see the image; write what's in it.
- Buying an overlay because a sales email quoted a deadline that belongs to a government rule.
- Fixing the home page and forgetting the checkout, which is the page the EAA's e-commerce definition is really about.
- Letting a redesign undo the work. New themes often ship with removed focus outlines and trendy low-contrast grey text. If you're planning one, add accessibility to the brief alongside the checks in our guide to redesigning without losing SEO.
- Uploading a PDF menu or price list as a scanned image. A screen reader reads nothing.
Platform choice matters less than people think. WordPress and Shopify can both produce accessible sites, and both can produce terrible ones. What decides it is the theme, the plugins or apps you add, and how content gets entered. If you're still choosing, our WordPress vs Shopify comparison covers the other trade-offs.
Where BerdisDev fits
If you'd rather not work through the list above yourself, BerdisDev can audit an existing site against WCAG 2.2 AA and fix the theme, forms and content, or build accessibility into a new site from the first template. Ongoing checks can sit inside a website care plan, so new pages and plugin updates don't quietly reintroduce problems. You can also send us your site and ask for a first look.
Frequently asked questions
Is my small business exempt from the European Accessibility Act?
If you provide services and you're a microenterprise under the Directive, yes. That means fewer than 10 staff and annual turnover or annual balance sheet total of EUR 2 million or less. If you have 10 or more staff, you're not a microenterprise, even if your revenue is small. Businesses that make or import covered products have different rules. Check your own position with a lawyer in the markets you sell to.
Does the European Accessibility Act apply to UK or US companies?
It can. The Directive defines a service provider as anyone who provides a covered service on the EU market or offers it to consumers in the EU, with no requirement to be based there. A UK or US online store selling to EU consumers, and not a microenterprise, should plan to meet the EAA for that store. Each member state enforces it under its own national law.
Is WCAG 2.1 or WCAG 2.2 required?
It depends on the rule. The US Title II rule for state and local governments uses WCAG 2.1 AA. UK public sector sites must meet WCAG 2.2 AA. The new European standard EN 301 549 V4.1.1 references WCAG 2.2 AA. For a private business, building to WCAG 2.2 AA is the simplest choice because it also covers 2.1 AA.
Do accessibility overlays make a website ADA compliant?
No. In 2025 the FTC ordered accessiBe to pay $1 million over claims that its AI widget could make websites WCAG-compliant, and barred it from making such claims without evidence. The Overlay Fact Sheet, signed by over a thousand accessibility professionals and users, says no overlay can make a site fully compliant with any accessibility standard. Fixing the site's code and content is the reliable route.
What are the minimum accessibility fixes for a small business website?
Start with alt text on meaningful images, text contrast of at least 4.5:1, full keyboard use with a visible focus outline, visible labels on every form field, captions on videos, and click targets of at least 24 by 24 CSS pixels. Fix these in your theme templates first, then test your key pages with WAVE, Lighthouse and a keyboard.
Is there a free way to check my website's accessibility?
Yes. WAVE from WebAIM and the Lighthouse panel in Chrome DevTools are both free and catch many common issues such as missing alt text, low contrast and unlabelled fields. They can't judge everything, so add a manual keyboard test: press Tab through each key page and confirm you can see where you are and complete every task.
Sources (18)
- Directive (EU) 2019/882, European Accessibility Act (EUR-Lex)
- European Commission, European Accessibility Act
- National Disability Authority, EN 301 549 V4.1.1 published
- GOV.UK, Understanding accessibility requirements for public sector bodies
- Equality Act 2010, section 20
- GOV.UK, Disability quick start guide for service providers
- GOV.UK, Equality Act 2010 draft Code of Practice for services, public functions and associations 2026
- ADA.gov, Guidance on Web Accessibility and the ADA
- Federal Register, Extension of Compliance Dates (Title II web rule), 20 April 2026
- W3C, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2
- W3C WAI, What's New in WCAG 2.2
- WebAIM Million 2026
- Chrome for Developers, Lighthouse accessibility scoring
- WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools
- W3C WAI, Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools List
- FTC, order requires accessiBe to pay $1 million (January 2025)
- FTC, final order approved (April 2025)
- Overlay Fact Sheet