How long do I have to make my site accessible?

The key date is 28 June 2025, with 2030 as an exception for ongoing situations

For most webshops and digital services, 28 June 2025 was already the date by which accessibility requirements had to be met; 2030 is not a general extension, but a transition arrangement for a limited number of already existing situations. The European Accessibility Act provides for a transition period until 28 June 2030 for service providers who were already delivering a service on the reference date of 28 June 2025 using products they were already lawfully using at that time. As long as that service continues unchanged with those same products, this transition arrangement may apply.

There is also a separate rule for ongoing contracts: service contracts concluded before 28 June 2025 may continue unchanged until the end of their term, with a maximum of five years after that date — which in practice also amounts to 2030. For self-service terminals, the rule is different: if they were already lawfully in use before 28 June 2025, they may continue to operate until the end of their economic life, with a maximum of twenty years, so potentially well beyond 2030. For a webshop that is built, renovated or substantially modified after 28 June 2025, the transition arrangement generally offers no relief: it falls under the main rule, and that date is now in the past.

Where this is based: Article 32 of the directive

This transition arrangement is set out in Article 32 of Directive (EU) 2019/882, which describes the conditions under which services and products that were already lawfully in use before 28 June 2025 may continue to operate for a number of years without being adapted to the new requirements. Whether a specific situation falls under this arrangement depends on whether the service is continuing unchanged and what product was already in use before that date — an automated scan of a website cannot answer that question, because it is not a technical property of the page but a legal qualification of the service and the product itself.