For digital regulation specialists, there was a time when the promise of new legislation brought with it genuine anticipation. Like children presented with a Christmas stocking, we would have unpacked each new enactment with excitement, accepting that while there may be some coal at the bottom, there would surely be something in there for everyone. But in recent years, the volume of EU and UK legislation is starting to feel more like an advent calendar without any chocolate. We have been spoiled through sheer variety but everything is poorly wrapped. Directives, requiring national implementation by Member States are like toys without batteries included which sit gathering dust as governments are distracted by shinier new laws.
Perhaps the most overlooked EU enactment of recent years is the European Accessibility Act (the EAA). As part of the EU's digital strategy the EAA creates requirements for manufacturers and importers of certain goods, as well as digital service providers, to adhere to common accessibility standards to ensure that consumers with disabilities in the EU are able to participate fully in the digital economy. After flying under the radar and generating minimal commentary during the drafting and legislative process, the EAA came into force in June 2025 with little happening until the end of the two-year transposition period, at which point a number Member States quickly rushed out legislation that was, by that point, extremely overdue.
"The EU is pursuing a human-centric, sustainable vision for digital society throughout the digital decade to empower citizens and businesses" so proclaims the European Commission on its Digital Decade policy page, but is this a vision that reflects the needs of everyone? Does the vision matter if the execution is lacklustre at best? While competing with the AI Act and other high profile initiatives for column inches, the EAA's impact so far has been muted, to the disappointment of accessibility specialists and disability rights campaigners. Despite a slow start and patchy coverage, the EAA does offer consumers across the EU the ability to demand accessible e-commerce websites and apps, e-books and e-readers, e-banking services and more. While these rights were already afforded to consumers in some Member States, they are new to others and enforceability across the Common Market means that global businesses have no choice but to take the new rules seriously.
Since the EAA was not on the pre-Brexit legislative agenda, it did not form part of retained EU law in the UK. The Public Sector Accessibility Regulations, introduced to fulfil the requirements of an earlier EU Directive, create specific digital accessibility requirements for public sector websites and apps, but no equivalent legislation is on the horizon for consumers in the UK. They are not, however, entirely unprotected and often overlooked provisions in the Equality Act 2010 (EQA) offer a tool to demand a greater focus on digital accessibility as the topic slowly gains momentum.
We think this is an area that has been overlooked for long enough and despite a slow start we predict that 2026 will see important developments in this space:
Regulators across the EU will flex but the limitations of the EAA will become clear
Despite accessibility being low down most regulatory agendas across the EU, the end of 2025 saw some market surveillance authorities begin to flex their muscles, with letters sent to a number of e-commerce providers and particularly e-book publishers by regulators asking questions about compliance and querying the sufficiency of compliance measures taken so far. We predict that the EAA will become another stick with which to beat larger tech platforms – for those Member States in which that is a politically expedient course of action - but a lack of enforcement against smaller businesses will frustrate consumers and activists.
The limitations of the EAA will also become apparent in respect of its scope and the remedies it offers. Users hoping to enjoy better access to news sites or social media platforms will be disappointed to discover that these services are unlikely to be covered as e-commerce services, which require there to be a transaction in some form to bring them within scope of the Directive. The EAA also operates within the pre-existing legal frameworks of Member States and while the law creates a cause of action where organisations are in breach of the EAA, with a right for recognised disability rights bodies to bring claims, the likelihood of collective redress in the form of group litigation is not encouraged so consumers seeking compensation for infringements of their rights under the EAA will have to bring claims in their own names and bear the risk of doing so individually, although NGOs and charities may assist them.
UK businesses will be caught out
While EU consumers might find the limited scope and anaemic enforcement of the EAA frustrating, we predict that the extra-territorial effect of the EAA will catch out some British-based businesses in 2026. Since the GDPR sought to impose European privacy standards on a reluctant world, the EU has been consistent in its expectation that companies accessing the European single market must adhere to the same standards as EU-based businesses. In post-Brexit Britain this has been fairly straightforward due to a relatively high level of harmonisation, with most post-Brexit EU developments having some form of equivalence in the UK, either already in place or in the offing. There is no equivalent UK accessibility law, however, and none is proposed. Unlike many other recent EU laws, the EAA does not build on or update a pre-existing EU regime to which the UK was once subject. This means that UK businesses may be surprised to discover that the goods they are selling in the UK will no longer meet EU accessibility standards (making it illegal to affix a CE mark). This surprise may be particularly jarring if it arrives in the form of an enforcement letter from a regulator in an EU Member State.
The UK government will continue to ignore accessibility but pressure will grow
While UK businesses may be caught out when EAA enforcement begins in earnest across the EU, we predict that the UK government will continue to ignore pressure to introduce specific digital accessibility legislation for the benefit of UK consumers. We expect that pressure from disability rights campaigning groups will increase as EU enforcement action highlights the disparity in the rights of EU and UK citizens, but despite the Labour government's broad preference for alignment with the EU, the pressure will not be enough to prompt a further increase in the regulatory burden on business given the Government's stated 'pro growth' agenda.
The Equality Act will get a new lease of life if consumers can fund their claims
If the UK government seeks to justify its decision not to introduce specific accessibility legislation, it will likely do so by arguing that there is already legislation in place to protect consumers with disabilities, in the form of section 20 EQA. More commonly heard of in the context of employment law, the EQA also addresses discrimination of those possessing certain protected characteristics in the context of access to services - though not goods - and while this is a narrower scope in a sense, the services covered by the EQA extend beyond the subject matter of the EAA, potentially covering social media and other consumer relationships which might be excluded from the scope of the EAA if there is no direct e-commerce aspect to the relationship. The EQA is already receiving attention in the context of discrimination claims brought against digital service providers relating to one protected characteristic, that of beliefs. Holders of religious and philosophical views, have, for example, attempted to deploy the EQA against social media platforms over their moderation and removal of posts which some may regard as offensive but others as a legitimate exercise of freedom of expression on a matter of public interest and debate. While the EQA doesn’t directly reference a right to digital accessibility it does create a broad right for those with protected characteristics – including disabilities - to demand reasonable adjustments from service providers to enable them to access those services. This has been widely accepted in practice and case law to include digital accessibility. The right to access services under the EQA operates in a similar way to the USA's Americans with Disabilities Act but while US consumers have the benefit of a broad range of litigation funding arrangements and access to class action and group claim mechanisms, UK consumers have a more uphill struggle to assert their rights.
Group litigation orders have never been granted for an access to services discrimination claim (and are barely available at all under English law), so the right to reasonable adjustments in the receipt of services is rarely pursued by consumers in the courts. Without easy recourse to collective litigation and no proactive regulation, access to services in the UK has been a right for those with disabilities in theory, but not practice. Individuals have the right to pursue their own litigation, but the relatively low value of such claims means that unlike in employment claims under the EQA where the stakes are higher and more quantifiable, costs may be hard to recover and the effort disproportionate to the vindication achieved in victory.
It is no surprise that, on the whole, disability rights campaigners have found public pressure to be a more successful tool than the law. However, equality claims against digital service providers are better suited to group litigation than those against more traditional service providers, as the possible class of claimants may be much larger and the loss more uniform than in the case of an inaccessible building, for example. It is also harder to argue that adjustments needed to digital architecture are unreasonable, whereas the restrictions of physical architecture may be hundreds of years old and subject to their own legal protections.
While it may not happen in 2026 (feel free to diarise to check in with us this time next year) we predict that the spotlight on digital accessibility in the EU will also cast its light over the UK, leading to a renewed focus on the EQA as a mechanism for consumers with disabilities to enforce their rights; with campaigners funding individual test claims and seeking opportunities for collective redress in the next few years.
