Here at Accessible.org headquarters, we’re getting the distinct impression that very, very few companies will actually be compliant with the European Accessibility Act (EAA) by the June 28, 2025 deadline. This leads us to ask, is everyone waiting to study until the night before the exam?
We say yes.
We’ve seen this play out in accessibility with Colorado state law HB21-1110 where so few state and local governments were compliant, they literally extended the deadline for a year.
Could we see an EAA deadline extension?
It’s possible, but our guess is, if there are indeed droves of non-compliant organizations, there will be more of an unofficial push to speed up compliance in the months after June 28.
Our impression is that most of the monitoring authorities in the EU member states aren’t waiting for the clock to strike midnight on June 27 to take out their penalty book and start assessing fines. However, remember that different regulators (representing different member states) will have different approaches and some may indeed apply the EAA strictly.
One potential scenario is a few larger corporations are penalized and made an example of to get other economic operators hustling to become compliant.
Another possibility is that monitoring authorities assess a slew of lighter fines early on so as not to be overly harsh, but at the same time show that EAA compliance needs to be taken seriously and that covered entities need to hurry.
We recently wrote about what to do if you’re not going to make the EAA deadline and the advice comes down to this:
- Be proactive
- Be transparent
- Don’t lie
If you start really pushing for compliance, you can accomplish a lot in just a few short months — and you’ll be far ahead of many others who have procrastinated, but aren’t proactive.
A big part of EAA compliance is investing in accessibility, making real progress, tracking that progress, and keeping records. We can help with organizing your project and demonstrating you’re making a genuine effort to be compliant. This helps your organization be in the best position possible, given your current non-compliant status.
If you need to start EAA compliance efforts ASAP, we’d love to help. Just send us a message and we’ll be right back with you.
Also, have you seen our EAA in plain English outline for the admin side of compliance? That PDF is a must download because it makes the EAA obligations easier to understand.
