EU Web Accessibility Directive: a practical FAQ
Directive (EU) 2016/2102 is not the European Accessibility Act. Different scope, deadlines and penalties, and where an audio version does and does not help.
There are two European directives on digital accessibility and they get confused constantly. The European Accessibility Act, Directive (EU) 2019/882, covers products and services on the market: e-commerce, banking, transport, e-books. Directive (EU) 2016/2102 covers something else: the websites and mobile applications of public sector bodies. Different scope, different timetable, different penalty regime. A public body preparing for compliance against the wrong text is preparing for the wrong obligations.
This is a FAQ on the first of the two, the 2016 directive.
Who does it apply to?
Public sector bodies: the state, regional and local authorities, their associations, and bodies governed by public law established to meet needs in the general interest. In practice that runs from a ministry down to a town of two thousand people, taking in agencies, universities and public hospitals along the way.
Who is excluded?
The exclusions written into the directive surprise people. Public service broadcasters are out of scope. So are non-governmental organisations that do not provide services essential to the public. Schools, kindergartens and nurseries are excluded, except for their online administrative functions, which means the school's website is out and the enrolment portal is in.
Certain content is also outside the scope: live broadcasts, maps and mapping services (provided essential information is given in another form), reproductions of heritage collection items, and third-party content the body neither funds nor controls. Archives published before 23 September 2018 and not updated since fall outside as well.
What does it actually require?
Three things, and only the first is usually discussed.
Conformance with the harmonised European standard EN 301 549, which incorporates the WCAG criteria. Member states apply it through their own national reference framework, in France that is the RGAA, currently at version 4.1.2, with a version 5 announced for the end of 2026 aligned to WCAG 2.2 and an eighteen-month validity window for existing declarations.
A published accessibility statement setting out the level of conformity reached and listing the content that is not accessible. This is not a footer formality. It is the document in which a body publicly records the real state of its site, and an honest statement that lists non-conformities is worth more than a silent one, including from a monitoring perspective.
An accessible feedback mechanism, letting a user report a problem and request information in an alternative format, plus an escalation route when that report goes unanswered.
What were the deadlines?
They are behind us. Websites published on or after 23 September 2018 had to comply by 23 September 2019; sites published before that date, by 23 September 2020; mobile applications, by 23 June 2021. The question is no longer when but where are we.
What are the penalties?
They are set nationally, so the answer depends on the member state. In France, Article 47 of the law of 11 February 2005, as amended by Ordinance No. 2023-859 of 6 September 2023, provides for fines of up to €25,000 for failing to publish the required documents and up to €50,000 for the failure of accessibility itself, the second ceiling applying to the public sector. These are renewable every six months while the failure persists, and it is that renewal clause, rather than the headline figure, that changes the nature of the risk.
Not to be confused, again, with the European Accessibility Act regime, which sets materially different amounts and applies to private companies above a turnover and headcount threshold.
Does an audio version make a site compliant?
No, and this is the question worth being blunt about, because it is where the sales pitch usually overreaches.
An audio version is not a WCAG criterion, and it is not an EN 301 549 criterion. A site whose images lack text alternatives, whose forms are unlabelled and whose keyboard navigation does not work remains non-compliant whether or not it reads its articles aloud. Anyone selling you an audio layer as an answer to conformance is selling one thing as another.
It also does not replace a screen reader. A blind user navigates with their own tool, tuned to their own pace and their own voice settings, and does not need the page read to them on the page's terms. That distinction deserves its own treatment and has one: see audio version versus screen reader.
Then what is it good for?
Reaching an audience that technical conformance does not cover.
People with dyslexia, for whom reading is expensive but listening is not. Older users whose eyesight is declining without a screen reader being the right fit. People with low literacy, who are outside the scope of any technical standard and inside the population every public body is meant to serve. People whose first language is not the site's, for whom spoken and written comprehension are not the same difficulty. And the very large group reading on a phone, in transit, doing something else.
Put differently: conformance and audio answer two different questions. The first asks whether the site is usable with assistive technology. The second asks whether public information actually reaches residents. A public body can pass the first and fail the second, and many do.
In what order should we do this?
Conformance first, because it is mandatory and enforced: run the audit, fix the blocking criteria, publish a dated accessibility statement, make the feedback mechanism work. Mention the audio version in the statement only as a complementary measure, never as a conformance measure, the accessibility statement has its own drafting rules on exactly this point.
Then, with the baseline held, ask the reach question: how many residents actually read the council minutes, the traffic order, the note on school enrolment. That is where audio does its work, and it is a public service objective rather than a legal one.
WeDispatch narrates a site's content as it is published, with the player rendered into the page and a synced transcript that stays selectable, indexable text. The local government sites article goes into which public content gains most from being heard, and the accessibility page covers our own position. The quickest way to judge is to hear it on one of your own publications.
Sources: Directive (EU) 2016/2102, EUR-Lex, RGAA, French interministerial digital directorate.
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