Jurisdictions — Europe
Does the European Accessibility Act apply to UK websites? The honest answer for agencies
The question UK agencies keep getting
Since June 2025, UK agency inboxes have carried some version of: "We've seen headlines about the European Accessibility Act. Do our sites need to comply? What UK law applies?" Most vendors answer with a sales pitch. Here is the actual position.
What is true, verified
- The EAA does not apply to UK-only operations. The European Accessibility Act is EU law, applicable in EU member states since 28 June 2025. Post-Brexit, it was not retained in UK law. A UK business serving UK customers is not in its scope.
- But selling into the EU pulls you in. If a UK business offers in-scope services (e-commerce among them) to consumers in the EU, the EAA's requirements apply to those services — the law follows the market, not the company's registration. A UK agency with clients selling into the EU should treat those clients' sites as in scope and verify the specifics for each service category.
- The UK has its own duty, and it's older than the EAA. The Equality Act 2010 requires service providers to make reasonable adjustments for disabled people, and websites are services. There is no WCAG number written into the Act — but WCAG conformance is the de-facto evidence a service provider points to when the duty is questioned. Claims are typically settled rather than litigated to judgment, which is precisely why "we've never been sued" is weak assurance.
- UK public sector has explicit rules. The Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018 require public-sector sites to meet an accessibility standard (WCAG-based; the monitored version has been updated over time — check current GOV.UK guidance) and to publish an accessibility statement. If your client is a public body or supplies one, this is the sharper obligation.
How to check a client site yourself
Same first pass, whichever law applies:
- Accessibility signals: run an automated WCAG checker (axe-core is the open-source standard) on the key templates — home, a product/service page, checkout or contact form. Automated checks catch the mechanical failures that surface first in complaints: missing text alternatives, unlabelled form fields, insufficient contrast.
- Consent posture: load the site cold and watch what fires before any consent (UK GDPR/PECR — the consent rules survived Brexit even though the EAA didn't).
- Broken links and SEO basics: 404s, missing titles, absent meta descriptions — cover in one pass what the client will ask about next anyway.
- Document what you saw. Capture the page state behind every finding. An audit that cannot show its evidence is an opinion.
The honest shortcut
We built SiteComply to do exactly the pass above — accessibility signals, consent posture, broken links, SEO basics — in a single $29 audit where every finding points to the exact page state we observed. White-label friendly, built for agency portfolios, and it never claims more than it verified — including never telling a UK-only client that the EAA applies to them when it doesn't.