Do the accessibility rules apply to your website
The requirements apply to you if you sell to consumers online and are not a microenterprise. The rules have applied since 28 June 2025. They stem from the EU accessibility directive 2019/882, written into Finnish law in the Act on the Provision of Digital Services (digipalvelulaki, 306/2019).
Two directives, two different names
The regulation goes by two names, and that causes most of the confusion. The Web Accessibility Directive (2016/2102) covers the public sector and has been in force for years. The European Accessibility Act (2019/882) brought the requirements to consumer services in the private sector. For a business owner the second one is the one that matters, even though everyday conversation just says accessibility.
Three questions that tell you which side you are on
1. Do you sell to consumers online
The requirements cover digital services aimed at consumers: e-commerce, banking and payment services, e-books, passenger transport services and the user interfaces of audiovisual media services. A plain brochure site that describes your services and has a contact form is not in that group.
2. Are you a microenterprise
A microenterprise is a company with fewer than ten employees and an annual turnover or balance sheet total of no more than 2 million euros. Service-providing microenterprises are excluded from the requirements. The threshold is checked against your own figures, not by feel: with eleven employees the exemption does not apply, however small the turnover.
3. Do you sell only to businesses
Pure business-to-business trade falls outside the requirements. The line is still less clear-cut than it sounds. If the same online store serves both businesses and consumers, the consumer side decides. And if you supply services to the public sector, accessibility often appears in the procurement terms anyway.
What WCAG 2.1 AA means in practice
The technical bar comes from the European standard EN 301 549, which leans on levels A and AA of the WCAG guidelines. In plain language it means roughly this.
- Text stands out from the background. Light grey text on white is not enough.
- The site can be used with a keyboard alone, and the user can always see where they are.
- Images have a text alternative whenever the image carries real information.
- Form fields are labelled, and the error message says what went wrong and in which field.
- Videos are subtitled.
- Text can be enlarged to 200 per cent without the page falling apart.
- Nothing flashes or moves without a way to stop it.
- Heading levels are in order, because a screen reader navigates by them.
Most of this is already in place if the site was built with care. On an old site, the same list is a repair list.
What the site needs beyond the fixes
The service must publish an accessibility statement describing which parts meet the requirements and which do not yet. Users must also be given a way to leave feedback on accessibility, and the feedback must be answered within two weeks.
What happens if you do nothing
Supervision belongs to Traficom, the Finnish Transport and Communications Agency, which took the task over from the regional state administrative agencies at the start of 2025. Any user can file a complaint or a request for clarification about shortcomings they find, and the supervisor can order them fixed.
In practice, supervision has so far been guiding rather than punitive. Traficom received twenty-four new complaints in 2025, and in the cases that went as far as considering an order, the provider's fixes were judged sufficient. No penalties have been handed out. That still does not mean the matter can be forgotten. Answering a clarification request takes time of its own, and the fixes have to be made in any case.
Why an accessible site is also a sales advantage
The same work that makes a site accessible also makes it more readable to machines. Text alternatives for images, heading levels in order, clear link text and properly labelled forms are exactly what a search engine and an AI answer engine read. Adequate contrast and larger text also help the customer reading their phone outdoors in bright light.
Accessibility is therefore rarely a pure cost item. It is work worth doing anyway.
Where to start
- Run a free accessibility checker on your site and see what it finds
- Try it yourself: browse the site with a keyboard alone and see whether you can place an order
- Fix the forms and the purchase path first, because that is where the money moves
- Check the contrasts and the link texts
- Write the accessibility statement and agree who answers the feedback
If the site is so old that the fixes cannot sensibly be made, a redesign costs less than patching. Our guide on when to redesign your website lists eight signs that tell you where you stand.
With us, baseline accessibility is part of every build, because the same work costs more when done afterwards. The services page shows what a build includes, and the pricing page what it costs. If you are not sure whether the requirements apply to your business, ask. The answer is usually short.