SevirantaLive compliance monitor, update June 2026
EU Digital Accessibility Enforcement Monitor
The European Accessibility Act applies to anyone selling to consumers in the EU, wherever in the world your company is based. We monitor enforcement on primary, official sources.
Completed EAA fines
0
The calm before the storm. The enforcement apparatus was fully built in twelve months.
ACM sample: non-compliant
94%
Of large Dutch webshops and platforms failed to meet the WCAG standard (ACM, March 2026).
Countries with fine legislation
21 / 27
EU member states have their sanctions and fine ceilings definitively in place.
The market's baseline: 94% fails
When the Dutch regulator ACM sampled around a hundred large webshops, telecom and energy sites in March 2026, 61% turned out outright inaccessible: a customer with a disability simply couldn't complete an order, order buttons didn't respond to the keyboard, captchas were impassable. Another 33% had serious problems. Not a Dutch exception, but the state of the European market at the moment enforcement begins.
Official ACM publication
Reference date: 24 March 2026
61% of the sites examined had barriers that directly blocked transactions (ACM finding).
Source: acm.nl →Statutory fine ceilings per member state
Twenty-one of the twenty-seven EU member states have concrete fine amounts anchored in their legislation. These are the maximum instruments regulators now have ready:
| Country | Maximum ceiling | Status & oversight |
|---|---|---|
| Spanje / Luxemburg | tot € 1.000.000 | Most serious category of violations; legislation fully active. |
| België | tot € 200.000 / 6% omzet | Tied to a percentage of turnover for larger platforms. |
| Duitsland / Griekenland | tot € 100.000 | The MLBF in Magdeburg has been fully empowered since September 2025 (~70 FTE). |
| Oostenrijk | tot € 80.000 | Sanctions regime operationally anchored. |
| Ierland | tot € 60.000 | Market surveillance of digital services in force. |
| Frankrijk | tot € 50.000 | DGCCRF investigations started; courts demand full conformity. |
How enforcement works in practice
In the EU it's tiered: you first get a remediation order with a deadline, and only if you ignore it do penalty payments or fines follow. Outside the EU it works differently, there the pressure comes from private lawsuits, not a regulator.
Outside the EU: lawsuits instead of fines
United States, no government fine, but private claims. California charges up to $4,000 per visit under the Unruh Act; federally there are thousands of ADA Title III cases per year, plus attorney fees.
United Kingdom, under the Equality Act 2010 users can challenge an inaccessible site. No fixed penalty cap, but damages and legal costs.
One WCAG-compliant site covers the technical bar across all these markets, the difference is in who enforces and how. See the law per country →
The first case law, and it contradicts itself
The sharpest signal comes from the French courts, where the first two substantive rulings on the scope of the EAA transposition flatly contradict each other. In May 2026 the court of Lille dismissed the claims against Auchan's e-commerce subsidiary, reasoning that below a certain revenue threshold no obligation would apply, an interpretation fiercely contested by advocacy groups. Yet less than a month later, on 4 June 2026, the court of Caen ordered Carrefour France to make both its website and app fully accessible within six months: "accessibility must be total" (faire-face.fr). Two courts, two opposite outcomes, an appeal in progress, this is the legal cliffhanger of 2026. Whatever the outcome: the courts have now become an enforcement channel, and that changes the playing field for every business with EU customers.
The civil route. Germany and France out in front
The hardest pressure comes not from regulators but from private parties, much like the American model. In Germany the first formal warning letter landed back in August 2025, roughly six weeks after the law took effect; since then law firms report a steady stream of demands against web shops, largely via competition law. The central legal question, whether an accessibility failure amounts to an unfair commercial practice, has not yet been settled by a court, with the first rulings expected in the second half of 2026. In France it is advocacy organisations acting as de facto enforcers: in 2025 they served notice on and took to court four major supermarket chains over their inaccessible online grocery services, with the Lille and Caen rulings as the first results. The lesson is the same in both countries: the civil route moves faster than the regulator, and you don't have to wait for an inspection to be called to account.
As of: June 2026. We refresh this monitor every quarter, strictly from primary sources, we deliberately leave unverified claims out until they are solid.
Know where your site stands before someone else tells you
Enforcement is getting under way while most sites are still non-compliant. Scan your website against WCAG 2.1 and 2.2 AA, see exactly which barriers are stopping a customer, and get real code fixes, not an overlay that hides the problem. Start with a free scan and build, from day one, a record that proves you're taking steps.