Accessible digital services in Ireland: the EAA and S.I. No. 636 of 2023

01The position in Ireland

Directive (EU) 2019/882, the European Accessibility Act (opens external site), lays down shared accessibility requirements for a defined list of products and services. Being a directive, it needed national law. Ireland transposed it through the European Union (Accessibility Requirements of Products and Services) Regulations 2023, S.I. No. 636 of 2023, which apply from 28 June 2025. Any covered service offered to consumers here has had to comply since then.

Public bodies already had a regime of their own. S.I. No. 358 of 2020 transposed the Web Accessibility Directive for the websites and mobile apps of public sector bodies, in force since 23 September 2020, with the National Disability Authority as monitoring body. The EAA brings comparable expectations to private companies, but only for the services and products it names.

02Services that fall in scope

The directive lists, in Article 2(2), the services it covers when offered to consumers:

• E-commerce services: services delivered at a distance through websites and apps, at a consumer’s request, leading to a consumer contract. In practice, every online shop or booking journey aimed at consumers.
• Consumer banking services: consumer credit, payment services and accounts, electronic money and some investment services.
• Parts of air, bus, rail and waterborne passenger services: websites, apps, e-tickets and ticket sales, travel information including real-time updates, and self-service terminals. For urban, suburban and regional services only the terminals are covered.
• Electronic communications services and access to audiovisual media services, for example the apps and interfaces of broadcasters and streaming providers.
• E-books and the software dedicated to them.

Products are covered as well: computers and their operating systems, smartphones, payment terminals, ATMs, ticket and check-in machines, e-readers. If your software runs on such devices, the product rules reach you through the manufacturer that buys it.

Purely B2B services are outside the scope, though business buyers increasingly ask for the same standard in tender competitions. A portal used by both consumers and firms is in scope for its consumer side.

03Microenterprises

Under Article 4(5), a microenterprise that provides services does not have to meet the accessibility requirements for them. The directive’s definition is fewer than 10 staff and an annual turnover or balance sheet total of no more than €2 million. The exemption is limited to services: a small firm that places in-scope products on the market still meets the product rules. The CCPC has published guidelines for microenterprises on the Irish regulations.

What counts is the provider, not the builder. A large retailer’s webshop is in scope even when a three-person studio built it.

04What a site or app has to meet

The requirements are in Annex I. For services, websites, related online applications and mobile apps must be accessible consistently and adequately, by being “perceivable, operable, understandable and robust”. Those four principles are taken from the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and become concrete checks:

• Perceivable: alternative text for images, captions for video, enough colour contrast, content that reflows on a phone or at high zoom with nothing lost.
• Operable: everything works by keyboard, focus is visible and moves in a sensible order, no dialog traps the user, time limits can be extended.
• Understandable: clear labels and instructions, errors that say what went wrong and how to correct it, navigation that behaves predictably.
• Robust: correct semantics, so screen readers and other assistive technology can tell what each control is, what it is called and what state it is in.

Some services carry extra duties. Online selling must make identification, security and payment functions accessible and pass on the accessibility information that the responsible economic operator supplies about the products sold. Consumer banking must also make identification, electronic signatures, security features and payments accessible, and keep information understandable at no more than level B2 of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages.

Providers must also say how the service meets the requirements. Annex V puts this information in the general terms and conditions or an equivalent document, in accessible formats. Most organisations publish an accessibility statement and link it from the footer and the terms.

EN 301 549 and WCAG

Under Article 15, conformity with harmonised standards cited in the Official Journal creates a presumption that the requirements they cover are met. The European standard for accessible ICT is EN 301 549; version 3.2.1 is harmonised under the Web Accessibility Directive and incorporates the WCAG 2.1 success criteria at levels A and AA for web content.

Standards specific to the EAA are being drafted under a Commission standardisation request, so check which references are cited before relying on the presumption. In the meantime EN 301 549 is what regulators, auditors and buyers measure against. WCAG 2.2, a W3C Recommendation since October 2023, adds criteria such as minimum target size and accessible authentication. Building to WCAG 2.2 AA now covers 2.1 and gets you ready for the next revision.

05Disproportionate burden and fundamental alteration

Article 14 permits two exceptions: a requirement does not apply where meeting it would fundamentally change the basic nature of the service, or would place a disproportionate burden on the provider. Both are tight:

• The provider carries out the assessment itself, against the Annex VI criteria, and documents it.
• Funding received from other sources to improve accessibility rules out a disproportionate burden claim.
• The assessment is repeated when the service changes, when an authority asks, and at least every five years.
• Providers using the exception notify the market surveillance authorities in the Member States concerned; in Ireland that means the authority for the service in question. Microenterprises need not notify.

The exception covers only the specific requirement that is disproportionate, never the whole service. Use it as a last resort: most barriers come from components and content that are inexpensive to fix when caught early.

06Transitional arrangements

Article 32 sets out transitional periods; the first two are compulsory for Member States, the third optional:

• Until 28 June 2030, providers may keep delivering services with products they lawfully used for similar services before 28 June 2025.
• Service contracts agreed before 28 June 2025 may run unchanged until they end, for at most five years from that date.
• Where national law permits, self-service terminals lawfully in use before 28 June 2025 may remain in use until the end of their economically useful life, for at most 20 years from first use.

These periods protect existing hardware and contracts. They do not delay the rules for a site or app that you change, relaunch or offer to new customers. Check how S.I. No. 636 of 2023 applies each transitional rule before relying on it.

07Who enforces in Ireland

Enforcement and penalties are set nationally. Regulation 4 of S.I. No. 636 of 2023 divides the work between three bodies:

If you sell into other Member States, each one has its own transposing law and authorities, and they differ in detail. A service offered in Ireland and the Netherlands, for instance, answers to two sets of regulators.

08Accessibility as part of engineering

Few accessibility failures are deliberate. They come from components without semantics, content without alternatives and third-party widgets nobody tested. That is why a pre-launch audit disappoints: it surfaces dozens of problems that were cheap to avoid and are costly to fix late. What works is handling accessibility the way you handle security, as a property of how you deliver.

• A design system that is accessible. Buttons, forms, dialogs, menus, tabs and tables are built once with proper semantics, keyboard support and focus handling, tested with screen readers, and reused. Colour tokens are contrast-checked in light and dark themes.
• Accessibility in the definition of done. Each story states its acceptance criteria for keyboard use, labels and error handling, and reviewers check them like any other requirement.
• Automated checks in the pipeline. Rule-based scanners run on every build and stop regressions. They catch only some problems, such as missing labels, contrast and invalid markup, so they add to manual testing rather than replace it.
• Manual testing by people who know assistive technology. Keyboard only, screen readers on desktop and mobile, 400 per cent zoom and reduced motion, on the journeys that matter: sign-in, search, checkout, payment, account settings.
• Sessions with disabled users on the most important journeys, before release and after major changes.
• Third-party components covered by contract. Payment widgets, identity providers, chat assistants, consent banners, maps and video players are part of your service. Ask suppliers for an accessibility conformance report and test them in place.
• Content and documents. Editors learn to write alt text, headings and link text. PDFs customers rely on, such as contracts and statements, are tagged or offered in an accessible alternative.

That is how we deliver enterprise software and customer portals: checks run in the pipeline, and each release produces evidence for the accessibility statement and for questions from customers and the CCPC. The same goes for service assistants and portals on platforms such as Salesforce: the platform supplies accessible building blocks, and your own components and content decide whether the result stays accessible. For public bodies, the same practice supports S.I. No. 358 of 2020 and services that publish in Irish and English.

09Steps to take

1. 01List your services. Note every consumer-facing website, app, terminal and document by country, and decide for each whether the Act applies. Write down why, including for services you treat as out of scope.
2. 02Establish the baseline. Have an expert evaluate the critical journeys against EN 301 549 and scan the whole site automatically. Rank findings by their effect on users, not by count.
3. 03Fix at the source. Correct the design system and shared components first, so one fix reaches every page that uses them.
4. 04Publish the information. Explain in your terms or an accessibility statement how the service complies, give a feedback contact and keep it up to date.
5. 05Make it part of delivery. Acceptance criteria, automated checks, manual test scripts and a release gate for the critical journeys.
6. 06Manage suppliers. Put accessibility requirements and evidence into contracts with agencies, platforms and widget providers.
7. 07Record any exception. Where you claim disproportionate burden, document the assessment, notify the relevant authority where required, and schedule the review.

10Developments to follow

• Harmonised standards under the EAA, including a revised EN 301 549, and their citation in the Official Journal.
• Guidance and early enforcement from the CCPC, ComReg and Coimisiún na Meán, and from authorities in other countries where you trade.
• Changes to the Irish regulations or to the authorities designated for particular sectors.

The European Commission keeps an overview of the European Accessibility Act (opens external site). Date every internal note you make on the subject, because practice is still forming.