Does the European Accessibility Act apply to B2B?

Short answer. The European Accessibility Act (EAA) is aimed at products and services offered to consumers. A purely business (B2B) service, with no consumers involved, therefore largely sits outside its direct scope. But that's not the whole story: the moment you also sell to consumers you are bound by it, e-commerce aimed at consumers is explicitly covered, and even a pure B2B supplier feels the pressure because business customers who serve consumers themselves start demanding accessibility from their suppliers.

Does the EAA apply to B2B?

In most cases, not directly. The EAA (Directive (EU) 2019/882, in force since 28 June 2025) was written to safeguard the accessibility of a fixed list of products and services for consumers. In law, a consumer is a natural person acting outside their trade or profession. If you supply only other businesses, the services side of the EAA doesn't, in principle, affect you directly.

Even so, "we're B2B, so it doesn't apply to us" is a dangerous shortcut. There are three situations in which, as a B2B company, you end up dealing with it anyway.

1. You also sell to consumers, more often than you think

Plenty of companies call themselves B2B but have a consumer touchpoint somewhere: a webshop selling to both businesses and private buyers, a platform where sole traders or individuals also order, a sign-up or support environment that's open to everyone. The moment part of your offering reaches consumers, that part falls under the EAA. The law looks at the service towards the consumer, not at how you position yourself.

2. E-commerce aimed at consumers is explicitly included

The EAA names "electronic commerce" in so many words as one of the covered services. If you sell online to consumers in the EU, that sales environment has to be accessible, regardless of whether you see yourself as a wholesaler or a brand. The line is drawn at the consumer, not at the business model.

3. The indirect pressure: your business customers do have to comply

This is the lever most B2B companies underestimate. Your business customers who serve consumers themselves are, meanwhile, required to be accessible. They pass that down to their suppliers: in tenders, procurement terms and software selections, the standard EN 301 549 (the European norm that points to WCAG 2.1 level AA) increasingly shows up as a requirement. If you supply a tool, component or platform that ends up in their consumer chain, accessibility becomes a procurement requirement, even though you're not directly bound yourself. Not accessible then means: dropping out of the selection.

Exceptions and nuance

• Micro-enterprises (fewer than 10 staff and at most 2 million euro in turnover or balance sheet total) are exempt from the services side of the EAA. That exemption does not apply to products.
• The EAA is a directive: each EU country transposes it into its own legislation and may be stricter or slightly different on certain points. So always check the national transposition in the markets you supply.
• Even where the EAA doesn't apply to you, other rules may well do, such as accessibility rules for the public sector or general equal-treatment legislation.

This article is informational and not legal advice; have your situation reviewed by a lawyer.

What does this mean for you?

The practical conclusion for most B2B companies: you fall under it more often than "we're B2B" would suggest, and where you don't fall under it directly, your customers force it on you anyway. In both cases the safe route is the same: know where you stand. An honest scan shows, finding by finding, what's going wrong in your own code and how to fix it, the errors a machine can measure for certain, separated from the points that call for human judgement.

Scan your site for free and you'll see straight away whether accessibility is a risk or an advantage for you.

Sources

• European Accessibility Act, Directive (EU) 2019/882: full text on EUR-Lex — scope, definition of consumer, covered services including e-commerce, the micro-enterprise exemption, applicable from 28 June 2025.
• EN 301 549: the harmonised European standard that adopts WCAG 2.1 levels A and AA for ICT and that appears as a requirement in EU tenders.