The European Accessibility Act (EAA) came into effect on 28 June 2025. Since that date, any new product or service entering the EU market must meet common accessibility requirements. It’s a significant step toward ensuring that Europe’s 87 million people living with disabilities can use everyday products and services fully and confidently and will have a profound effect on workplace inclusion. The Act is designed to support both individuals and businesses. Until now, accessibility laws have varied widely across member states, creating unnecessary complexity for organisations and uneven experiences for people with disabilities.
The EAA doesn’t apply to everything, but it does cover many of the products and services that impact daily life, including e-readers, ATMs, smartphones, e-commerce, ticketing and transport services, and more. Put simply, if something digital plays a key role in how we live, work or communicate, the expectation is that it should be accessible to as many people as possible.
To understand why this matters, imagine walking into a meeting where every document is in Braille, and you’re expected to participate without any print version.
Would you feel equipped to contribute? Included? Quietly shut out? Discriminated against? For many people with disabilities, that’s the everyday reality when accessible design isn’t considered from the start.
With the EAA, the EU is sending a clear message: disability inclusion should be both a cultural responsibility and a legal requirement. Even with the EU’s ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, many people continue to encounter barriers to inclusion when businesses fail to design with them in mind. The EAA aims to remove and prevent those barriers in an increasingly digital world. There are now real consequences when organisations overlook or ignore accessibility.
Like most EU Directives, individual member states define their own penalties for non-compliance. However, the EAA stands out because it links accessibility requirements directly to the CE (Conformité Européene) process. Look closely at almost any product in the EU—digital or physical—and you’ll find the “CE” mark somewhere. These small letters signal compliance with essential safety, health, and environmental standards.
By tying accessibility standards into the CE process, the EAA puts teeth behind the talk of disability inclusion. If a product fails to meet the required accessibility standards, it will not receive a CE mark. And without that mark, it cannot be sold anywhere in the European Single Market.
In other words, the EU is ensuring that the “rights” of persons with disabilities are actually enforceable rights, instead of just aspirational nice-to-haves.
Accessible design doesn’t only benefit those who rely on accessible features. What’s essential for one group often improves the experience for everyone else, creating products and services that are easier, clearer and more enjoyable to use—and laying the foundations for a more inclusive society.
There are countless examples of how universal design has sparked innovation that benefits all of us.
Alexander Graham Bell began experimenting with sound because his mother was deaf. His subsequent work with the deaf community—and his marriage to Mabel Hubbard, who was also deaf—shaped his ideas and ultimately led to the invention of the telephone.
Decades later, BT’s Big Button phone, with its large well-spaced keys and high-contrast layout, was created to support people with limited vision or motor control. It went on to become one of the most popular landline phones in the company’s range, with many people choosing it as a simpler, more intuitive bedside phone than the standard models.
More recently, Microsoft’s Xbox Adaptive Controller, co-designed with accessibility organisations for gamers with limited mobility, has been widely praised and adopted within the gaming community.
These examples aren’t just stories about clever products. They reveal a pattern businesses can’t afford to ignore: when you design with accessibility in mind, you often end up creating something the whole market values.
But that only happens when you bring a range of perspectives into the room. Inclusive design isn’t just a technical exercise—it’s a process that grows stronger when more voices are part of the conversation.
This is where the workplace comes in. The EAA isn’t only about consumer products; it has clear implications for how we work. Today, work is digital work. Whether someone is logging in from home or collaborating in an office, the tools they rely on—from recruitment platforms to learning systems to everyday communication apps—must be accessible. When digital tools aren’t accessible, neither is the workplace.
Workplace inclusion benefits everyone—including businesses themselves. Research by Accenture has also found that companies leading in disability inclusion consistently outperform their competitors, achieving 1.6 times more revenue and 2.6 times more net income. They also exceed industry peers in productivity by 25 percent. And employees with disabilities perform just as well as their colleagues and typically have better or equal attendance rates and lower turnover rates.
The EAA strengthens workplace inclusion. It improves many different touchpoints that shape a working day—-from commuter journeys to digital check-ins, from elevator rides to paying by card at lunch. When those everyday moments are accessible, they create a more frictionless experience not only for people with disabilities but for everyone who interacts with those systems.
When workplaces are more inclusive, they attract and employ more people with disabilities. And when you bring a wider range of perspectives into a company—more seats at the table—you naturally create more inclusive products, services and environments. That, in turn, shapes a more inclusive society.
In this way, the EAA becomes a catalyst. It’s a first step in a self-perpetuating cycle in which better accessibility leads to more participation, more representation and, ultimately, more inclusive design everywhere.
December 15, 2025
Beyond compliance: how the EU Accessibility Act will redefine workplace inclusion
by Stephen Cluskey • Comment, Workplace
The EAA doesn’t apply to everything, but it does cover many of the products and services that impact daily life, including e-readers, ATMs, smartphones, e-commerce, ticketing and transport services, and more. Put simply, if something digital plays a key role in how we live, work or communicate, the expectation is that it should be accessible to as many people as possible.
To understand why this matters, imagine walking into a meeting where every document is in Braille, and you’re expected to participate without any print version.
Would you feel equipped to contribute? Included? Quietly shut out? Discriminated against? For many people with disabilities, that’s the everyday reality when accessible design isn’t considered from the start.
With the EAA, the EU is sending a clear message: disability inclusion should be both a cultural responsibility and a legal requirement. Even with the EU’s ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, many people continue to encounter barriers to inclusion when businesses fail to design with them in mind. The EAA aims to remove and prevent those barriers in an increasingly digital world. There are now real consequences when organisations overlook or ignore accessibility.
Like most EU Directives, individual member states define their own penalties for non-compliance. However, the EAA stands out because it links accessibility requirements directly to the CE (Conformité Européene) process. Look closely at almost any product in the EU—digital or physical—and you’ll find the “CE” mark somewhere. These small letters signal compliance with essential safety, health, and environmental standards.
By tying accessibility standards into the CE process, the EAA puts teeth behind the talk of disability inclusion. If a product fails to meet the required accessibility standards, it will not receive a CE mark. And without that mark, it cannot be sold anywhere in the European Single Market.
In other words, the EU is ensuring that the “rights” of persons with disabilities are actually enforceable rights, instead of just aspirational nice-to-haves.
Accessible design doesn’t only benefit those who rely on accessible features. What’s essential for one group often improves the experience for everyone else, creating products and services that are easier, clearer and more enjoyable to use—and laying the foundations for a more inclusive society.
There are countless examples of how universal design has sparked innovation that benefits all of us.
Alexander Graham Bell began experimenting with sound because his mother was deaf. His subsequent work with the deaf community—and his marriage to Mabel Hubbard, who was also deaf—shaped his ideas and ultimately led to the invention of the telephone.
Decades later, BT’s Big Button phone, with its large well-spaced keys and high-contrast layout, was created to support people with limited vision or motor control. It went on to become one of the most popular landline phones in the company’s range, with many people choosing it as a simpler, more intuitive bedside phone than the standard models.
More recently, Microsoft’s Xbox Adaptive Controller, co-designed with accessibility organisations for gamers with limited mobility, has been widely praised and adopted within the gaming community.
These examples aren’t just stories about clever products. They reveal a pattern businesses can’t afford to ignore: when you design with accessibility in mind, you often end up creating something the whole market values.
But that only happens when you bring a range of perspectives into the room. Inclusive design isn’t just a technical exercise—it’s a process that grows stronger when more voices are part of the conversation.
This is where the workplace comes in. The EAA isn’t only about consumer products; it has clear implications for how we work. Today, work is digital work. Whether someone is logging in from home or collaborating in an office, the tools they rely on—from recruitment platforms to learning systems to everyday communication apps—must be accessible. When digital tools aren’t accessible, neither is the workplace.
Workplace inclusion benefits everyone—including businesses themselves. Research by Accenture has also found that companies leading in disability inclusion consistently outperform their competitors, achieving 1.6 times more revenue and 2.6 times more net income. They also exceed industry peers in productivity by 25 percent. And employees with disabilities perform just as well as their colleagues and typically have better or equal attendance rates and lower turnover rates.
The EAA strengthens workplace inclusion. It improves many different touchpoints that shape a working day—-from commuter journeys to digital check-ins, from elevator rides to paying by card at lunch. When those everyday moments are accessible, they create a more frictionless experience not only for people with disabilities but for everyone who interacts with those systems.
When workplaces are more inclusive, they attract and employ more people with disabilities. And when you bring a wider range of perspectives into a company—more seats at the table—you naturally create more inclusive products, services and environments. That, in turn, shapes a more inclusive society.
In this way, the EAA becomes a catalyst. It’s a first step in a self-perpetuating cycle in which better accessibility leads to more participation, more representation and, ultimately, more inclusive design everywhere.
Stephen Cluskey is CEO and Co-founder of Mobility Mojo