Not sure where your website stands in terms of EAA compliance? Don’t wait until 2025 to find out—it might be too late.
The European Accessibility Act (EAA) introduces sweeping requirements to ensure digital products and services are accessible to people with disabilities. By June 28, 2025, businesses across the EU (and those outside it doing business in the EU) will need to comply—or face potential legal and financial consequences. This includes ensuring your website meets the accessibility standards referenced in the Act, primarily the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1, Level AA.
But how do you know if your website is up to par? What if you’re not sure what accessibility even looks like in practice?
The good news is that you don’t need to be a developer or accessibility expert to begin assessing your website. In this guide, we walk you through practical steps—some that you can take right now—to evaluate your current accessibility status and prepare for the EAA.
Start with Automated Accessibility Tools
The easiest way to get started is by using a free automated accessibility checker. Tools like axe DevTools, WAVE, or Google Lighthouse can scan your website for common accessibility errors.
These tools are fast, easy to use, and can provide immediate feedback on issues like missing image alt text, poor contrast ratios, or missing form labels. You simply plug in your URL or install a browser extension, and within seconds, you’ll receive a report highlighting potential violations.
However, it’s important to understand their limitations. Automated tools typically detect only about 30–40% of accessibility issues. They can’t fully understand context or user experience, and they won’t catch things like whether your page layout makes sense to someone using a screen reader. So while this is a valuable first step, don’t stop here.
Test Your Site Using Only a Keyboard
Accessibility isn’t just about visual elements. One of the simplest but most revealing tests you can perform is to navigate your website using only your keyboard—no mouse, no trackpad.
Start at your homepage and try to move through your content using the Tab key. Can you access every link, button, and form field? Do you see a visible outline or focus state when you tab through interactive elements? Can you access menus, modals, and dropdowns?
Keyboard navigation is essential for users with motor disabilities and for many screen reader users. If you find that some parts of your website are inaccessible, it’s a sign that your developers may need to add proper semantic markup or ARIA roles to enable full keyboard control.
This kind of test takes just a few minutes but can uncover serious usability gaps that automated tools might miss entirely.
Simulate the Experience with a Screen Reader
Another critical check is to experience your website through the lens (or rather, the ears) of a blind user. Screen readers like VoiceOver (built into macOS) and NVDA (a free tool for Windows) convert on-screen content into spoken word or Braille output.
Enable one of these tools and try navigating your site. Is the experience logical and smooth, or confusing and fragmented? Can you understand where you are on the page? Are buttons and links properly labeled? Do headings create a clear content hierarchy?
Many websites—especially those with custom components or complex navigation—fail to deliver a coherent experience when read aloud. Testing your site with a screen reader reveals how well your site communicates without visuals, which is a fundamental part of accessibility.
Cross-Check Against WCAG 2.1 AA Guidelines
At the heart of the European Accessibility Act (EAA) is the WCAG 2.1 Level AA standard—a globally recognized benchmark for digital accessibility.
WCAG is structured around four key principles: content must be Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust (POUR). Within those principles are success criteria that websites must meet to be considered accessible. For example:
- Text alternatives must be provided for non-text content like images.
- Contrast ratios must meet minimum thresholds to ensure readability.
- Navigation must be consistent and predictable.
- Error identification must be clear when users fill out forms incorrectly.
The official WCAG documentation can be dense, but you don’t need to master it all to conduct a basic check. Many organizations use simplified WCAG checklists (such as those from W3C or accessibility consultancies) to guide their internal reviews. These lists translate technical criteria into practical items your team can verify.
While checking against WCAG manually takes time, it’s essential to understanding whether your site meets the legal bar set by the EAA.
Get a Professional EAA Audit
While the previous steps can uncover many issues, the only way to be fully confident in your website’s compliance is to get a professional accessibility audit.
Accessibility consultants and firms conduct in-depth reviews that go beyond surface-level checks. These audits combine automated scanning, manual testing, assistive technology usage, and WCAG compliance analysis. They typically result in:
- A detailed report outlining where your site passes or fails
- An impact and severity analysis of each issue
- A prioritized remediation roadmap
- Expert guidance on how to implement fixes
Most importantly, an audit can help protect your organization from legal risk. If a user lodges a complaint—or if a national enforcement body begins an investigation—having an audit and remediation plan in place shows that you’ve taken meaningful steps toward compliance.
Even if your site is mostly compliant, a professional audit can reveal opportunities to make your content more inclusive and user-friendly for all.
Don’t Wait Until It’s Too Late
The EAA compliance deadline may seem far away, but making your website accessible is not something you can fix overnight. Depending on your website’s complexity, the remediation process can take weeks or even months. You may need to revise templates, rebuild components, or rework your CMS workflows.
That’s why it’s essential to begin assessing your readiness now. By identifying gaps early, you give your team time to prioritize and implement changes before the deadline hits. Plus, accessibility improvements benefit all users—not just those with disabilities. Accessible websites are often faster, easier to navigate, and better optimized for search engines.
So, where do you stand?
Ready to Find Out?
Run your free EEA audit today and receive a personalized compliance scorecard in under 2 minutes. Don’t leave accessibility to chance—get clear answers and take the first step toward EAA readiness.