The EAA is Coming to Bite you in the Arse: a talk on the European Accessibility Act, presented by Piccia Neri at Hatch Conference in Berlin, on 6 September 2024.
Useful download: Guide to the European Accessibility Act
Transcript
You know who will soon have to stop being a total dick to disabled people? It’s airlines and travel booking engines. And do you actually know why? Any idea? Well, it’s because they’re currently being total dicks to disabled people. The stats are absolutely appalling.
75% of airline websites are not accessible to disabled users. And for this reason, the European Accessibility Act is about to bite them in the arse. In fact, it has already started, as you will see.
And you’re probably thinking right now that, I mean, unless you’re disabled, booking a flight is relatively easy, don’t you? Well, unless it’s Ryanair, in which case it’s more like an obstacle course, regardless of ability. But while abled people do manage to book their flights in the end, or Ryanair or other airlines, however treacherous and irritating the journey may be, unfortunately, that is not the outcome for some. My friend Lazar Bulatovic, who is blind from birth and he’s also an accessibility tester, told me about his usual experience when he tries to book a flight.
And these are his words. Booking a flight can be very challenging for the blind. This is because most ticketing systems do not have accessible date pickers.
Being completely blind, I actually cannot choose departure and returning dates. So what do I do in these situations? Go somewhere else and find another company. Ask your buddy for help.
So test your date picker, make sure it’s disability-friendly, otherwise chances are that you’re losing a tonne of money. Now, my accessible typography masterclass students and I actually had Lazar demo his attempt at picking flight dates on a major booking engine. And believe me, it was absolutely infuriating as well as enlightening.
Why the European Accessibility Act exists
And if you’re wondering right now why the European Accessibility Act exists and why it is apparently so strict, is it though? Or isn’t an accessible date picker just common courtesy as well as common sense? Well, that’s why. One of the reasons is so that blind people and other assistive tech users can book a flight as easily as everybody else, just like they deserve, just like everyone deserves. But what is the European Accessibility Act from now on the EAA exactly? Well, the EAA is not a law.
It’s an EU directive establishing a consistent set of basic accessibility requirements. Because in the EU, in fact, each state has sovereignty over their own laws. So everybody makes their own laws in their own way.
So much so, in fact, that the EAA was born largely from the need to harmonise because it was becoming quite hard to comply with the different rules in each country. Also, it was very important to finally include the private sector for certain vital services. But even so, each EU state member passes their own legislation still using the EAA.
And you can go stricter, but you can’t go less strict, because that’s what a benchmark is. It’s the bare minimum. But still, every country will have their own set of criteria, their own methods of enforcement and penalties.
As we will see in a bit, some states do choose to be pretty effing strict. Tick tock! The final deadline is the 28th of June, 2025, with an extension until 2030 for certain products. For instance, bank ATMs, because that’s quite complicated to change them all.
It’s a big piece of hardware. And the deadline, by the way, was… This is the deadline for every country to pass the laws. But the previous deadline was, in fact, June 2022, but only three countries complied with that deadline.
And weirdly, Italy was one of them. Go figure, you know, they were on time. It was extraordinary.
Affected products and services
Now, most countries have passed the laws, and they’re already applying them. And both products and services in the public sector, but also the private, crucially, will be affected, because it wasn’t the case prior to this. This is a list of the product categories that will be affected.
Computers, including smartphones and tablets. And that’s really interesting, because we’ve moved to hardware as well. It’s software, but also hardware.
Payment terminals, including card readers. Cash withdraw kiosks. Self-service terminals, like check-in, ticket sales, and so on.
Interactive information terminals. So, for instance, not a train departure board, because that’s not interactive, so that stays the same. Products that are used to access communication services, such as routers and modems.
Products used to access media services, like digital TV boxes and smart TVs. And reading tablets, like Kindle’s Cobos, that you use to read e-box. So, these are the products.
Then the services, electronic communication services, like network subscriptions, calls, emails, SMS chat, all of that has to be accessible. For instance, the WhatsApp audio messages that I hate, because I can’t read them, but media services, like streaming services and TV guys. Transport services, like booking websites, apps and ticket kiosks.
So, finally, people like Lazar can do their bookings. Banking services, websites, apps, queueing systems, and kiosks. But I can’t believe that they went under no actual obligation so far, thinking how vital this service is.
And e-books, and this is probably going to mean no more PDFs, I’m afraid.
Now, the best one for all?
E-commerce, including any website or app, where a purchase can be made of a product or a service.
Wait a minute, is it all of e-commerce? Well, yeah, I’m afraid that that’s what it looks like, all of it.
There’s no further specification, categorisation of the type of e-commerce. And if you’re thinking, just in case, but we or our clients are not based in the EU, if you sell to the EU, it really doesn’t matter where you are, you have to comply. It’s a little bit like the GDPR, but worse.
So, full stop, you have to comply. Now, if you’re railing in anguish, I want to offer a ray of hope, maybe, cracking through the gathering clouds.
Exemption criteria
There are exemption criteria for companies for now, and I say for now, because this is not going to stop.
It’s just going to get better and better, in my opinion. Some people may say stricter and stricter, but I think it’s really good. So, micro companies, micro enterprises, and that means fewer than 10 employees and annual balance sheet below 2 million euros.
And then it’s mainly business to consumer, but that’s open to interpretation, because there are some supposedly B2B products and services that in fact can have consumers as their final users. For instance, WordPress plugins, there are a good example of this. And the word consumer is mentioned 49 times in the EAA, but the word employee, unfortunately, is never mentioned.
So, this is, I think it’s a shame, but it appears to not apply to the workplace. This is just mainly B2C. I hope this changes soon.
And these are the exemption criteria for products and services, again, for now. If the product will radically change by making it accessible, I guess, for instance, this may apply to a computer game that can’t change in its nature. Pre-recorded media published before June 2025.
Office file formats published before June 2025. Online maps, if essential information is communicated excessively. Archives content that’s not updated after June 2025.
This is the vital date. And then third-party content that’s not funded, developed, or under the control of an organisation, and must be compliant. Now, what will happen if you don’t comply? Now, I’m going to say whether we use a lot in your accent is it depends.
Or I could even have said it’s complicated, because it is. It is complicated, and it really does depend, because not every country has passed a laws yet, although most have, but there are a lot of variables. And in fact, you know, I told you earlier about the harmonisation.
Hasn’t quite happened. I mean, it’s happened in some ways, definitely. I think that finally you can… It’s easier to understand which standard to adhere to, but what the penalties are is a different story.
However, let me slide in a very important disclaimer right now. I am not a lawyer. I am a designer who decided years ago to go all in with accessibility for a number of excellent reasons that I think should be your reasons too, if you haven’t yet.
Regardless of whether you or your clients fall into the exemption category or not. I don’t think it matters.
Examples of penalties
Having said that, here are a few examples of what the penalties could look like, and they have already started, as we’ll see in a minute.
Financial penalties start at around 60,000 euros, or they can be based on a percentage of global revenue, which is set at 5% for Spain, for instance. Very interestingly, in Germany, you can report your non-compliant competitor. How clever is that? Because the reasoning behind it is that if you went to the investment in time, resources, and money to get accessible, that might have put you behind slightly, mind you.
I think it’s going to propel you forward after that, but it gives you a right to report those who haven’t done it if, because it’s perceived that you would be at a disadvantage. Another great one that I love is that your right to sell in the country where you’re reported or in the EU could be revoked. And you may also be excluded from governmental grants.
And here is the example I promised that has already happened. Spain fined the airline Vueling to the tune of 90,000 euros for failing to provide adequate accessibility for people with disabilities on its website.
The interesting thing to me is that rather than going, oopsies, sorry, my mistake, let’s get accessible and make more money in the meantime, getting money from people like Lazar, they’d rather argue their right to be dicks in court because when you get reported, it’s not like you go to court immediately, you get the chance to remediate. It’s not like instant, a fine or instant court case.
So they had the chance and they just went, ah, don’t care. So if you think that 90,000 euros is mere piffle to such a big company, well, 90,000 euros plus legal fees, you have to bear in mind that, as we said, accessibility fines usually are accompanied by other things such as: access to public grants can be revoked. And airlines are known to have relied upon that in the past.
Plus, if they were banned from selling in the EU as well for an airline like Vueling that’s based in the EU, that would be an absolute disaster. And I’m really dying to know what Ryanair are going to do about it because, yeah, their user journeys are more like the Hunger Games, really. And I’ve saved the best for last.
The cherry on the cupcake is that CEOs are liable to serve up to 18 months of jail time in Ireland. It starts at six months. That’s a good card to play with your company.
So I bet they’re feeling the bite a little bit now. But if there’s anyone that’s still thinking, why is this being enforced? It’s very simple. It’s because we all need to stop being dicks to disabled people.
Effects of dickish online behaviour towards a disabled person
And if you’ve never witnessed, personally, the effects of dickish behaviour on a disabled person, here’s an example of a global retail giant, Tesco, being a total dick to our friend, blind, accessibility testing and user. Oh, God. God, no, here is something terrible here.
Yes. I’m really curious, though, to know from you, Lazar, can you skip when you realise that there’s a slider that’s not even making sense saying things that make any sense? How easy is it for you to skip it to go to the content that you’re interested in? It’s very difficult. I don’t know if it’s even possible.
Look, basically, this is very, very difficult, because when you have this slider moving around, everything becomes literally a nightmare. I don’t think there is. Maybe there is not.
But when they change so rapidly, I will tell you that I can’t visit this website and I cannot interact with the website properly. Maybe some users could. Now, in my case, that’s not possible, at least today.
So a slider for Tesco, a nightmare for Lazar, literally a nightmare. So we experienced it the way a deaf person experiences it. Those who read, I know I told you about it, but never mind.
Moving on, the slider issue has been fixed. I am the bearer of good news. Lazar told me the other day that it’s been fixed.
And the funny thing, or not so funny, but weird, is that in 2001, Tesco went on a huge campaign of making their website accessible. And they had a 37,000% return on investment. It was insane.
So we were very surprised when that thing happened and made Lazar go, oh, my God, this is terrible.
Impacted categories
So who should you get ready for? Should you get ready for blind people? Yeah, of course, but not only. There are various categories that are impacted and it’s not always the same.
Accessibility has different requirements for everyone. These are the categories:
- Without vision
- people without vision or with limited vision
- without perception of colour
- without hearing, with limited hearing
- without vocal capability
- with limited manipulation, strength, or reach
- with risk of photosensitive seizures
- with limited cognition
- with vestibular disorders
- with other physical or cognitive disorders.
How to lose customers
And now I’m going to show you an example that doesn’t need sound, of this website that looks amazing. And as I land on it, a full-width video auto-plays and it’s like a view from high and I’m already dizzy and I cannot stop this video from playing.
Then I desperately scroll down and when I scroll down, there are all these boxes with very, very low contrast and a really thin typeface and I move further down trying to escape and here I am on a grid where wherever my mouse goes, it changes and there’s more text on an image and I can’t read anything. And then I go and I check with an accessibility tool, what the issues are. And by the way, accessibility tools are about 30% effective, I mean, reliable. There’s so much more they don’t understand and mostly it’s contrast errors but it’s also got empty links and other mistakes. And then when I go back up and I go back to the get back to the video that auto-plays, I see, oh my god, it’s appeared.
There’s a pause button and I go and desperately try to activate an account and then the settings little wheel is on top of it and I’m like, oh god, maybe I can stop it. Maybe I can stop it. Oh, it’s gone blue.
That means something’s gonna happen and guess what, nothing happens. I can’t stop it. There is no way for me to stop it.
And I know that maybe if you don’t have this, I literally have to turn back because I will barf. It makes me, it literally makes me sick. So there are major issues with this website that I direct WCAG violations, web content accessibility guidelines that are the benchmark for compliance.
So unstoppable animation, text and images, low contrast, almost no keyboard control. So Lazar wouldn’t be able to use this website either. And just to make it clear, I wasn’t looking for examples for this presentation.
I was trying to book a holiday in Greece, and they’ve lost me as a customer because usually lack of accessibility is like also bad customer care. They tend to go together, so I wouldn’t go. And before you say, but it’s such a creative and beautiful website.
Is it though? Because it’s just such a pain and so much that’s wrong about it is actually bad design out of the box. You wouldn’t, a traditional, anyway, I won’t go there. It’s another rabbit hole.
But also, and I really mean this, creativity loves a good brief: and accessibility is the best brief of all.
How to get ready for the EAA
This could have been a good final slide, but it’s not because we need to talk about how to get ready now. Don’t panic.
I really don’t think you should. I think it is hard. I’m not going to say that it isn’t, but it’s not, not only is it not impossible, it’s all going to be much better.
What to aim for is again, complicated, but so the EU standard is detailed in the document that’s called EN 301549. You don’t need to retain all of this. You can get a link to a living doc that I’ve created with all the links and details of this.
But aiming for WCAG 2.2 AA compliance should be a safe bet, where these are the latest guidelines and A is minimum level, AA is middle obviously, and AAA is very specialistic, probably is quite hard. We won’t talk about it right now. Steps to take.
First of all, inform your clients of the impending doom. And again, I am joking because I do think that it’s all going to be for the best for everyone, businesses included. But I would make clients, prospective clients aware of the fact that you are indeed working on this and therefore can offer them a compliance service.
Second step to take is to get an expert to audit your websites and products. And if you get them tested after June 2025, it should really be someone who has an official accessibility certification, which I previously didn’t care that much about, but now it’s going to be important. Third step to take, plan ahead, because in some countries like France, it’s an actual requirement.
They’re going to demand to see what your plan is. And it’s a three-year plan in France. Then train your team.
This is the best one. Prevent and not cure. Developers, designers, marketers, content creators, admin staff, everyone, because the most common accessibility issues are actually quite easy to fix.
And they can be avoided by making sure that your content and designs are accessible in the future. And I’m helping a lot of companies with this at the moment. And it’s great because then staff, instead of being worried and overwhelmed, they’re empowered and suddenly excited about what they can do now.
Then make accessibility part of your workflow. This can be hard in certain companies, but really, it’s the way ahead. Adopt accessibility statements.
And this, again, is a requirement. What to include in your accessibility statement. The standard that you’re using as your goal.
2.2 is safer, but it may be that you can give reasons why it should only be 2.1. The most recent accessibility test that you’ve had performed list of known issues and a remediation plan. And how users can report issues. And this is really important.
Because this way, if someone reports an issue, they will do so in a spirit of collaboration rather than investigation. Then, and I can’t stress this enough, consult a lawyer, a lawyer always, because you can read the letter of the law, but then it can be open to interpretation. And the EAA is not clear cut.
So do that. Because the truth, in fact, and again, this is to remind you that your task is not as easy as you might think. Good design and good coding are natively accessible as well as sustainable, because that’s another really important thing.
Accessibility as a business opportunity
Accessible websites are good for SEO and they’re good for the environment. And then another truth, and maybe it’s the biggest one, that’s usually what I lead with, is that the EAA is a huge business opportunity. Don’t miss out.
Because accessibility is a moral imperative, but even more so, it’s a business one. The cost of lack of accessibility, you’ve already seen it today three times with me and with Lazar. 75% of disabled people and their families have walked away from a business.
We’ve seen it happen. It happens every day numerous times. The spending power of the disabled population globally is $13 trillion, increasing by 14% every year.
These are the figures. It’s an emerging market that is larger than China to put things into perspective. It makes complete business sense to go for it.
Just in the UK, and I couldn’t find recent data for the EU actually, but in the UK, what is called the per per pound, the spending power of the disabled population and their family and carers is £274 billion yearly. Multiply that by 27. You get the EU, it’s a lot.
There’s a really great Accenture report that says that disability inclusion champions, and that actually includes the workplace, they realised 1.6 times more revenue, 2.6 times more net income, and twice as much economic profit. Because in fact, we shouldn’t ever take our abilities for granted.
This is the case because we are all just temporarily abled. This was Cindy Li, who was an incredible accessibility advocate. She said that, and just think simply when you’re driving with the sun in your eyes, that makes you temporarily disabled or situationally disabled.
And when your arm is broken, then it’s temporary. This is situational. Or you’re on a busy train carriage and you can’t watch a video, you need the captions, or you’re simply holding a child in your hands, and so you’ve only got in your arm, you’ve only got one hand, or you’re by the side of the car and you experience a bout of anxiety because that’s also what accessibility has to do with anxiety and a whole host of neurological conditions.
And then I want to remind you, universality as the driving principle of the web. There’s a beautiful quote: “The power of the web is in its universality. Access by everyone, regardless of disability, is an essential aspect.”
This was by Tim Berners-Lee, the granddaddy of the web and the W3C director. And he said this in 1998 when the whole accessibility, when it was all started. So now I want to, just to finish, end up where we started, once again, the driving principle that we started from.
Just don’t be a dick. And that’s it. Thank you.
Thank you so much.