Web accessibility means people with disabilities, seniors, or anyone with a temporary limitation—like an arm in a cast—can use your site. Since June 28, 2025, accessibility has been mandatory for online stores and other e-commerce services under the EU's European Accessibility Act, implemented in Czechia as Act No. 424/2023 Sb. In our reading, this accessibility law does not cover brochure websites where customers cannot place orders.

We explain who the law covers, what accessibility means in practice, and how to find your site's weak spots in 30 minutes without a developer. This article reflects the situation as of November 2026 and does not replace legal advice.

What changed in June 2025

Since June 28, 2025, consumer e-commerce services must meet accessibility rules. In Czechia, this is set by Act No. 424/2023 Sb., which transposes Directive (EU) 2019/882 (the European Accessibility Act). The same rules apply across the EU.

Under Section 3 of the Czech act, an e-commerce service means a website or mobile app where a consumer concludes a contract remotely. In practice, this covers e-shops, online orders, service bookings, and ticket sales. If you also run a shopping mobile app, the rules apply to it too: it must support system font scaling, work with screen readers, and have clear button labels. The law also covers payment terminals, banking, and communications, though here we focus on websites and e-shops.

In our reading, a brochure site without orders falls outside this definition because customers do not conclude contracts on it. Once you add ordering, appointment booking, or ticket sales, the law applies to you. Public authorities and institutions in Czechia have had mandatory accessibility since 2019 under Act No. 99/2019 Sb.

Still, web accessibility pays off for everyone. People with low vision or seniors look for a contractor or an accountant just like anyone else. A readable, easy-to-navigate site helps them choose you even on a standard brochure website.

Does the European Accessibility Act apply to you?

The accessibility law covers you if you sell to consumers online and are not a microenterprise. You can check in a few steps.

Do you sell to consumers online? The law applies to distance contracts with consumers, not pure business-to-business (B2B) sales. If both companies and consumers without a business ID buy from you, your entire consumer checkout journey must be accessible.

Are you a microenterprise? Microenterprises are exempt (Section 2(3)). According to the Czech Ministry of Industry and Trade, these are businesses with fewer than 10 employees and annual turnover or a balance sheet total up to EUR 2 million (linked and partner enterprises in a group count together).

Did you sign a customer contract before June 28, 2025? Those services can continue unchanged until the contract expires, or until June 28, 2030 at the latest (Section 28(5)). This will not help a standard e-shop, because every purchase is a new contract.

Would compliance impose a disproportionate burden? An exemption applies if changes would fundamentally alter the service or cause a disproportionate burden (Section 15). However, you must first complete a documented assessment under the annex to the act and notify the Czech Trade Inspection Authority.

Example: a fictional cosmetics e-shop has four employees and around EUR 1 million in turnover, so it is exempt as a microenterprise. Once it grows to twelve staff, the exemption ends. Build accessibility into your e-shop from day one.

What an accessible website means in plain English

Anyone can use an accessible website regardless of how they see, hear, or operate a computer. The international WCAG 2.2 guidelines rest on four principles:

• Perceivable: images have text descriptions, videos have captions, and text has sufficient contrast.
• Operable: the site works with a keyboard alone, and nothing disappears too quickly.
• Understandable: copy, navigation, and error messages are clear, and the site behaves predictably.
• Robust: different browsers and screen readers for blind users can interpret the code.

This is not just about permanent disabilities. A shopper with low vision needs to enlarge text without breaking the layout. Someone with a broken arm shops using only a keyboard, while others read on a phone in bright sunlight or watch muted videos on a tram.

The law does not name a specific technical standard, but under Section 16 meeting a harmonized standard is enough. In practice, businesses use European standard EN 301 549, which adopts WCAG at Level AA. Ask your vendor for this exact level.

Accessibility also helps SEO and AI answers: image descriptions, clear headings, and descriptive links make it easier for search engines to understand your page.

What does an accessible checkout look like? Every field has a permanently visible label. Errors appear as text right next to the field (for example, "Enter a five-digit postal code"), not just as a red border. The button clearly says "Place order," checkout has no strict time limit, and bot protection does not rely solely on typing distorted letters. Clear structure helps your homepage too—read more in Website homepage.

The most common issues you can spot yourself

The most common web accessibility issues are basic: low text contrast, images missing descriptions, and unlabeled form fields. This shows up in the WebAIM Million, an annual automated scan of the homepages of the world's top one million websites. The 2026 edition, using February 2026 data, found automatically detectable WCAG 2 errors on 95.9% of pages, averaging 56.1 errors per page.

We see the exact same issues on Czech websites: light gray text on white backgrounds, unnamed cart and search icons, or form labels that vanish on click. You can fix all of these without rebuilding your site, often within days.

Light brand colors on white backgrounds often fail contrast checks on small text and buttons. Use a darker shade for text and buttons, and save the light brand color for larger surfaces.

Automated tools cannot tell whether image alt text or an error message actually helps, or whether a buyer can check out by keyboard. Test that manually on one page of each template type (homepage, category, product detail, cart, checkout, contact)—fixing one template fixes every page that uses it.

Your content editor can add photo descriptions, rewrite vague "read more" links into specific text (such as "Shipping rates"), and break up copy with headings. A developer handles templates, contrast, and keyboard navigation. Follow the same rules whenever you upload new photos and banners.

A 30-minute website accessibility test

In 30 minutes, you can find your website's weakest spots—without a developer or paid tools. This test is based on W3C's Easy Checks. Focus on your purchase path: product search, product page, cart, and checkout.

Write down what fails and where. Fix purchase-blocking issues first, like a checkout that traps keyboard users. This check does not replace a professional audit, but it gives you a concrete brief for your vendor. Repeat it after major updates and once a quarter.

Try adding a product to the cart using a screen reader too (Narrator on Windows, VoiceOver on Mac and iPhone, TalkBack on Android), or ask a colleague or someone who uses a screen reader daily to test it.

Enforcement, fines, and what to do now

In Czechia, the Czech Trade Inspection Authority enforces the accessibility law for e-shops (Section 19(2)). Under Section 25, serious violations—where a service fails accessibility requirements or ignores an ordered remedy—carry fines up to CZK 10 million. Minor violations, such as failing to publish accessibility information, carry fines up to CZK 1 million.

In your terms and conditions or a similar document, you must maintain an accessible statement explaining how your service meets the requirements (Section 14): which standard you tested against (e.g., WCAG 2.2 Level AA), what does not yet comply, when you will fix it, and where users can report issues.

What to do next:

1. Check whether the law applies to you.
2. Run the 30-minute test and log what you find.
3. Fix the purchase path: search, product detail, cart, checkout, registration, and forms.
4. Add an accessibility statement to your terms and conditions.
5. Put WCAG Level AA compliance and verification rules into your vendor contract.
6. Set content rules for new uploads and ask your e-commerce platform provider how they handle templates and checkout.

At checkout, e-shop accessibility directly affects revenue—see Abandoned cart in e-commerce. Starting January 1, 2027, EU consumer rules also introduce a mandatory contract withdrawal button, and its form must be accessible too.

When building e-shops, we design for accessibility from the start because retrofitting costs more. If you want to review your e-shop's accessibility with us and get a prioritized fix list based on checkout impact, get in touch.

Frequently asked questions