My website has existed for years — does it also have to become accessible?

The age of your website does not matter

No, how long a website has already existed makes no difference to the accessibility requirement. The European Accessibility Act does not look at the construction date of a site, but at the service offered on it from the moment the directive becomes enforceable. A webshop built ten years ago is subject to exactly the same requirement as a webshop that went live last month, as long as the underlying service falls within the scope of the directive.

What does matter is whether the website or app offers a service that falls under the directive, and whether the provider is not exempt under the exemption for micro-enterprises. These two questions can be traced through the pages does the accessibility law apply to my webshop? and am I as a small entrepreneur exempt from the accessibility law? — both are separate from how old the site is. If the site has never been updated and is technically outdated, that does not change the obligation itself; it does make it more likely that more work is needed to meet the requirements, simply because older code often takes less account of accessibility than more recent construction methods.

Why age is not relevant: the directive governs services, not websites

The European Accessibility Act (Directive (EU) 2019/882) is designed as a directive that sets requirements for certain products and services, not for websites as such — a website is the means by which a service is offered, and it is that service that falls within or outside the scope. The directive contains no provision that makes an exception for existing or older websites; however, there is a transitional arrangement that concerns the date on which the obligations come into effect, which is something different from an exemption based on age. When exactly those obligations come into effect and what transition periods apply is described on the page about how much time do I have to make my site accessible?