Can I get an exemption because adapting it is too expensive?

Disproportionality exists, but is not a free choice

Disproportionality in the directive is an exception ground, not an exemption that an entrepreneur can invoke by pointing to costs. The European Accessibility Act recognizes that adjustments sometimes require a fundamental change or impose a disproportionate burden on an entrepreneur, and provides scope for this. But that is different from "it is expensive, so it does not apply to me" — an assessment must be made and that assessment must be documented.

What that assessment exactly entails and who checks whether it is correct is a matter of national implementation and oversight. In the Netherlands, oversight of webshops and apps rests with the ACM, which has already called on companies to prepare for these rules. An appeal to disproportionality is therefore not a free pass in advance, but something whose justification must hold up afterwards. That is a different route from the exemption for micro-enterprises: am I as a small entrepreneur exempt from the accessibility law? describes that different, indeed rigid exception based on staff size and turnover — the two are not interchangeable.

Where this follows from the directive

The exception for disproportionality is in the European Accessibility Act itself, as an assessment ground alongside the general accessibility requirements — the directive states that adjustments may be omitted if they constitute a fundamental change of the service or impose a disproportionate burden, without this being automatic. How this is concretely assessed and enforced runs through national implementation: in Germany that is the Barrierefreiheitsstärkungsgesetz, in the Netherlands the legislation that the ACM oversees. For those who are uncertain whether their own situation falls under the law at all before the question of disproportionality becomes relevant, the first step is usually does the accessibility law apply to my webshop? — only once scope is established is an appeal to this exception in order.