On June 28, 2025, the European Accessibility Act (EAA) went into effect. This legislation sets a clear standard across the EU: websites, apps, and digital services must be accessible to all users, including people with disabilities.
For marketers, the EAA doesn’t introduce a brand-new concept so much as it raises the bar. Many accessibility practices – such as responsive design, clear text, and alt tags – have been standard best practice for years. What changes now is that accessibility moves from being a best practice to an explicit legal requirement.
In this article, we break down what the EAA means for digital marketing teams – and how the Wyng platform and Wyng Services can help you create accessible, compliant customer experiences.
What is the European Accessibility Act?
The European Accessibility Act (EAA) is an EU-wide law aimed at ensuring that products and services are accessible to people with disabilities. It applies to a broad range of hardware, software, websites, mobile applications, and services across industries. To comply with the EAA, organizations must focus on:
- Accessible digital interfaces – including compatibility with screen readers, clear and logical navigation, and legible, scalable text.
- Inclusive customer support – making sure all users can easily access service information and assistance.
- Accessibility-first product design – incorporating features like tactile controls, adjustable settings, and support for assistive technologies.
- Up-to-date accessibility statements – publishing and maintaining accessibility statements for all covered products and services.
For marketers, the most relevant part of the EAA is its requirement that customer-facing digital experiences – such as websites, landing pages, and mobile apps – meet recognized accessibility standards.
How Does It Affect Brands?
If you market to or serve customers in the EU, your digital experiences must meet the accessibility standards set by the EAA. You don’t need to be headquartered in the EU to be covered by these rules – if EU customers can access your website, mobile app, or digital campaigns, you’re expected to comply.
For brands, this means making sure your digital experiences can be used by everyone. Content must be perceivable and operable for people with visual, hearing, motor, or cognitive impairments. Barriers such as poor color contrast, missing alt text, gesture-only navigation, or layouts that don’t adapt to different devices need to be removed. And pages should be built with clear headings, labels, and structure so that screen readers and other assistive technologies can interpret them and make navigation easy for all users.
Failure to comply can lead to regulatory action, reputational damage, and even restrictions on doing business in the EU. At the same time, the benefits of accessibility go far beyond compliance. It opens your brand to a broader audience, including millions of people with disabilities and an aging population. It improves the overall user experience with clearer navigation and more responsive design. It enhances SEO by making content easier for search engines to understand, and it strengthens your reputation as an inclusive brand. In other words, accessibility is not just about meeting legal requirements – it’s about creating experiences that welcome everyone and make your brand more competitive.
How is the EAA Different from WCAG?
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are internationally recognized best practices for making digital content accessible. The EAA uses WCAG as its foundation, but it goes further by making compliance mandatory for a wide set of industries across the EU. Think of the EAA as WCAG with legal teeth:
- WCAG: A voluntary standard (unless referenced by specific national or sectoral regulations).
- EAA: A binding EU law that requires compliance with accessibility principles for defined services and products.
Wyng’s Role in Supporting Accessibility
At Wyng, we believe that inclusive design is essential to building exceptional customer experiences. Our platform is built with positive user experiences and accessibility at the forefront, and provides the tools and flexibility marketers need to create experiences that can meet the requirements of the European Accessibility Act (EAA).
However, it’s important to clarify that Wyng does not guarantee EAA compliance by default. Compliance depends on how each experience is implemented – particularly when it comes to content, color choices, and image usage. It is the responsibility of each customer to apply accessible design and content practices when using the Wyng platform.
Platform Features That Support Accessibility
Wyng experiences are built to support:
- Responsive design that adapts across screen sizes and orientations
- Control over colors and all styling elements
- Keyboard and touch navigation that avoids mouse-only or gesture-only interactions
- Clear semantic structure through proper use of headings and HTML elements
- Programmatic labels that align with visible text, aiding screen reader interpretation
- Reflowable layouts that allow for zooming and text resizing without breaking the experience
- Customizable alt text for images
These capabilities give brands the foundation they need to create accessible experiences. However, how those capabilities are used – such as selecting compliant colors, writing alt text, and configuring form elements – remains in the hands of the customer.
Services Support for Accessibility Audits and Implementation
Some of the accessibility checks our Services team performs include:
- Verifying color contrast and flagging any combinations that fail to meet standards
- Reviewing forms and inputs to confirm proper labeling, clear error messaging, and user-friendly validation cues
- Ensuring all text is live and selectable, not embedded within images
- Adding and validating human-friendly alt text for all images and image-based elements
- Assessing copy length, font size, and spacing to maintain readability
- Confirming screen reader and keyboard accessibility for all interactive elements
- Testing across devices and browsers (desktop, tablet, mobile; Chrome, Firefox, Safari, etc.) to identify rendering or functionality issues
- Identifying and addressing gesture-only interactions by providing alternative input options
If you’re unsure whether your experiences meet EAA requirements, we’re here to help. Reach out to our team to discuss how we can support you.
View the Wyng Accessibility Statement for more information.
Want to Ensure Compliance? Let’s Talk.
Accessibility is both a legal requirement and a growth opportunity. The EAA sets a new bar, and Wyng is ready to help you meet it.
If you’d like guidance on making your digital experiences accessible and compliant with the European Accessibility Act, contact us today.
