In the US, June might seem like a month for weddings or Juneteenth or Father’s Day. And it is.
But this year, it’s also the month in which the European Accessibility Act (“EAA”) is going to take effect across all 27 countries that belong in the European Union.
Who the EAA applies to
Companies headquartered outside the EU – the US of A included – could be forgiven for thinking the EAA doesn’t apply to them.
But the reason it’s called the European Accessibility Act is because it’s there to protect European consumers. What matters most is whether you are providing products and services to Europeans, not where your company is headquartered.
Given that the US sells almost $400B of goods to Europe a year, there’s a good chance that plenty of US companies are going to be subject to EAA. Ditto for companies based in the UK, Canada, Mexico, and Brazil, all of which are important trading partners, too.
So with this in mind, we thought it would be helpful to study what European companies have done to get ready for EAA, since they have little doubt that the EAA applies to them and they’ve had six years of advance notice. We hired a third-party research firm and they spent two months talking to 120 companies headquartered in Europe.
The results? Well, you’ll need to read the report. The not-so-good news is that the state of readiness is a little shaky, as only 27% of companies we talked to consider themselves fully prepared.
The good news
But the good news is there’s nearly universal interest in transforming product development so that accessibility errors don’t see the light of day.
Different teams can have different views on how to make that transformation happen. But the conversation, as of June 28, 2025, isn’t going to be about whether to do it.
It’s going to be about how.
By proposing and implementing such a coherent and comprehensive set of guidelines with a long reach across borders, the EU has effectively changed the terms of how companies are going to view accessibility going forward.
So, even if companies haven’t prepared as much as they could have, it still gives us something else to celebrate in June.
How to get the report
The EAA Readiness Report is available for immediate download on this page.