Accessibility guide

ADA vs EAA: US and EU Web Accessibility Law Compared

If you sell into both the US and the EU, two different legal regimes can apply to your website: the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in the US and the European Accessibility Act (EAA) in the EU. They share a practical target — WCAG — but differ in how they work and how they are enforced. This guide compares them side by side.

Reviewed by the EAA Navigator team

TL;DR

  • The ADA is US civil-rights law; the EAA is an EU directive transposed into each member state. Jurisdiction follows where you operate or sell, not where you are based.
  • Neither names a single mandatory web standard for every case, but both converge on WCAG Level AA in practice (the EAA via EN 301 549 and WCAG 2.1 AA; the ADA via case law and the DOJ Title II rule, which adopts WCAG 2.1 AA).
  • The ADA is enforced largely through private lawsuits, which run into the thousands each year. The EAA is enforced by national market-surveillance authorities, with penalties set by each member state.
  • If you serve both markets, build to WCAG 2.1 AA (or 2.2 AA) as a common baseline rather than chasing each regime separately.
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In this guide

What this covers

  • Jurisdiction: who each law applies to and how cross-border selling brings you into scope.
  • The technical standard each regime relies on, and why both land on WCAG Level AA.
  • How each is enforced — private litigation in the US versus market surveillance in the EU.
  • The deadlines that matter, including the EAA application date and the DOJ Title II compliance dates.

What matters

Key differences

  • Standard: the EAA uses EN 301 549, which incorporates WCAG 2.1 AA. The ADA has no explicit web standard for private businesses, but courts and settlements use WCAG 2.0/2.1 AA, and the DOJ Title II rule for state and local government adopts WCAG 2.1 AA.
  • Enforcement: the US sees thousands of web-accessibility lawsuits a year against private "public accommodations". The EAA is enforced by designated national authorities rather than primarily through private suits.
  • Who is liable: under the ADA, the business operating the website. Under the EAA, the economic operator placing the product or providing the service, with obligations flowing across manufacturers, importers, distributors and service providers.
  • Deadlines: EAA requirements apply from 28 June 2025. The DOJ Title II deadlines (after a one-year extension in April 2026) are 26 April 2027 for populations of 50,000 or more, and 26 April 2028 for smaller populations and special districts.

Across web accessibility, Level AA of WCAG 2.2 is the working target, and for the EU it is incorporated into the harmonised standard EN 301 549.

What to do

What to do next

  1. Identify which markets you serve — selling to EU consumers or US users can pull you into one or both regimes regardless of where you are based.
  2. Adopt WCAG 2.1 AA (or 2.2 AA) as a single working baseline that satisfies the practical target of both laws.
  3. For the EU, map your service to the EAA and treat EN 301 549 conformance as the goal; prepare the accessibility information the EAA expects.
  4. For the US, reduce litigation risk by testing against WCAG AA, fixing real barriers and publishing an accessibility statement with a contact route.
  5. Commission a manual audit rather than relying on automated scans alone, since most legal exposure comes from issues automated tools cannot detect.

For the standard itself, see the WCAG explainer; to put it into practice, work through the WCAG 2.2 AA checklist.

FAQ

Common questions

Is the ADA or the EAA stricter?
They are hard to rank directly because they work differently. In practice both converge on WCAG Level AA, so a site built to WCAG 2.1 AA addresses the core technical expectation of each. The bigger difference is enforcement: the US relies on private lawsuits, while the EU relies on national authorities and member-state penalties.
If I comply with the EAA, am I ADA-compliant too?
Not automatically, but you are most of the way there. EAA conformance through EN 301 549 means meeting WCAG 2.1 AA, which is also the de-facto benchmark used in US ADA cases. You should still publish a US-style accessibility statement and keep testing, as ADA exposure is driven by real barriers and litigation, not a certificate.
Does the ADA name a specific WCAG version?
Not for private businesses under Title III; there is no explicit technical web standard, and courts and settlements have used WCAG 2.0/2.1 AA. The DOJ Title II final rule for state and local government, published in April 2024, does adopt WCAG 2.1 AA.
How many ADA web lawsuits are filed each year?
Thousands. Counts vary by how they are measured — roughly 2,500 federal-only to around 4,000 across all venues in 2024 — but the consistent picture is that web-accessibility lawsuits run into the thousands per year in the US.
I am a US company — does the EAA affect me?
It can. The EAA applies to products and services placed on the EU market, so a US business selling an in-scope service such as e-commerce to EU consumers can fall within its scope regardless of where the company is based.

Make your site accessible

Start with the WCAG 2.2 AA checklist, then work through the guides to fix what you find.

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This is guidance, not legal advice

This guide is here to help you understand web accessibility and how WCAG, the EAA and the ADA apply in practice. It is not legal advice. For decisions specific to your business, confirm with the official sources we link or a qualified adviser.

Sources

  1. [1]Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 (W3C Recommendation)retrieved 9 Jun 2026
  2. [2]WCAG overview (W3C Web Accessibility Initiative)retrieved 9 Jun 2026
  3. [3]Directive (EU) 2019/882 — European Accessibility Act (EUR-Lex)retrieved 9 Jun 2026
  4. [4]EN 301 549 v3.2.1 — harmonised ICT accessibility standard (ETSI)retrieved 9 Jun 2026
  5. [5]US DOJ ADA Title II web accessibility rule fact sheetretrieved 9 Jun 2026
  6. [6]WebAIM Million 2025 — accessibility of the top 1,000,000 home pagesretrieved 9 Jun 2026
  7. [7]Overlay Fact Sheet — why overlays do not deliver complianceretrieved 9 Jun 2026

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ADA vs EAA: US vs EU Web Accessibility Law Compared | EAA Navigator · EAA Navigator