28 June 2025 marked an important turning point in European e-commerce: from that day on, the requirements of the European Accessibility Act, or EAA, apply to the products and services concerned.
For many webshop owners, the only thing that stuck from all this was that 'the webshop has to be accessible from now on'. The regulation is considerably more complex than that: not every business faces the same requirements, there are exemptions, the situation of micro-enterprises can differ from that of larger companies, and it also matters whether you sell to consumers or exclusively to business partners.
What is far less uncertain, however, is that digital accessibility can no longer be treated as merely a well-intentioned UX improvement.
What does the EAA actually mean?
The EAA harmonises the accessibility requirements of certain products and services within the European Union. The regulation covers, among other things, computers, smartphones, banking and transport services, e-books - and e-commerce.
From a webshop perspective, it's especially important that the legislation defines an e-commerce service as an electronic service provided via a website or mobile device, aimed at concluding a consumer contract. A traditional B2C webshop serving private individuals therefore typically falls within this scope.
So does every webshop have to rebuild its site?
Not necessarily. One of the most important exemptions applies to micro-enterprises providing services.
Under Hungarian regulation, a micro-enterprise is a company that employs fewer than 10 people and whose annual net revenue or balance sheet total does not exceed the HUF equivalent of EUR 2 million. Such service-providing businesses are exempt from the EAA's accessibility obligations for services, which can be a significant relief for many smaller Hungarian webshops.
However, the exemption shouldn't be interpreted as automatically taking every EAA-related question off the agenda. If the business also operates, for example, as a manufacturer, importer or distributor of a product covered by the directive, separate product-side obligations may arise. So for a webshop, the first thing to clarify is always in what capacity the business operates, who it sells to, what products it offers, and whether the micro-enterprise conditions are met.
And what happens to an exclusively B2B Sellvio webshop?
This is a particularly interesting question. The Hungarian regulation ties the e-commerce service explicitly to concluding a consumer contract, and defines the consumer as a natural person acting outside the scope of their business or professional activity.
It follows that a B2B webshop genuinely serving only businesses can be in a different position from a classic consumer-facing store. With a mixed B2B-B2C operation, however, it's no longer enough to point out that most of your buyers are companies. If private individuals can also order from the webshop, the consumer sales process needs to be examined separately.
What does it mean for a webshop to be 'accessible'?
It's easy to reduce digital accessibility to having a button for larger font sizes, but it's about far more than that. It doesn't only concern blind or visually impaired users, but everyone who, for whatever reason, finds it harder to use a webshop in the conventional way.
This can include, for example, someone who can't use a mouse and navigates by keyboard, relies on a screen reader, has difficulty distinguishing certain colours, is hearing impaired, or simply struggles to find their way around an overly complicated interface.
Hungarian regulation builds the accessibility of online interfaces around four fundamental principles: the website must be perceivable, operable, understandable and robust. This follows very similar logic to the internationally widely used WCAG recommendations.
The European EN 301 549 standard draws heavily on the requirements of WCAG 2.1, which is why WCAG 2.1 AA remains an important practical reference point in an accessibility project today. But the two shouldn't be treated as completely identical: the EAA's requirements and the European standard can go beyond the WCAG rules in certain areas.
In a webshop, the homepage isn't the most critical part
From an e-commerce perspective, one of the most important accessibility questions is not how usable the homepage is, but whether the customer can get through the entire ordering process. Hungarian regulation therefore pays special attention to the functions related to identification, security and payment. These must be just as perceivable, operable, understandable and robust as the rest of the webshop.
During an accessibility review, it's therefore worth walking the full customer journey: category → product page → cart → login or guest checkout → shipping → payment → order confirmation.
If even a single critical step along this path can only be used with a mouse, the keyboard focus disappears, a form field isn't properly labelled, or the system signals an error exclusively with colour, that can already constitute a real accessibility problem. In other words, a webshop can only be considered truly usable if it can be not just browsed, but also purchased from, without barriers.
A significant share of today's websites have plenty to improve
Shortcomings in digital accessibility are far from rare. The WebAIM 2026 Million study examined the homepages of one million popular websites, and the automated check found problems indicating WCAG 2 A/AA-level failures on 95.9% of the pages. On average, 56.1 accessibility errors were identified per page. What's more, the most common problems weren't tied to exotic technical details, but to entirely everyday elements. Insufficient colour contrast was found on 83.9% of pages, at least one image was missing alternative text on 53.1%, and improperly labelled form fields appeared on 51%.
At the same time, such results need to be interpreted properly, because automated tests can only detect a portion of accessibility problems. So just because a webshop scores zero errors in an automated check, that doesn't guarantee it's genuinely accessible in practice.
What does all this mean for a Sellvio webshop?
One of the biggest advantages of a rented webshop platform is that the merchant doesn't have to build every technical element through custom development. Sellvio currently offers 216 customisable design variations, mobile-friendly operation, integrated payment solutions, content management and numerous third-party integrations, and it can be used for both B2C and B2B sales.
From an accessibility standpoint, however, it's important to separate the platform's responsibility from the merchant's. A well-built webshop engine can centrally prevent many technical problems, but the final store's compliance doesn't depend on the system alone.
The platform is responsible for, among other things, the technical operation of the templates, navigation, forms, cart, checkout and the controls generated by the system. The merchant, meanwhile, chooses the colours, uploads the images, writes the product descriptions, creates the banners, shapes the navigation and switches on the external services. Even a technically well-made template can easily be turned into a hard-to-use webshop. All it takes is choosing colour contrast that's too weak, displaying important information exclusively as images, or using link labels that tell the user nothing on their own.
Accessibility is therefore best handled in two layers: at the platform level and at the content-and-configuration level alike. Only the two together can produce a genuinely usable webshop.
In webshop design, conversion and accessibility often demand the same things
At first it's easy to view accessibility as yet another legal obligation piling extra tasks onto the merchant. In practice, however, many solutions improve accessibility and the shopping experience at the same time. Proper colour contrast, for example, can be essential help for visually impaired users, but it's equally an advantage for someone browsing the webshop on a phone in bright sunshine. Large, easily recognisable buttons are indispensable for certain users, while making mobile use simpler for everyone.
The same goes for a transparent category structure, logical headings, clear form error messages and an easy-to-follow checkout process. These aren't only important for accessibility - they can directly influence how easy it is to find your way around the webshop and complete a purchase.
In many cases, digital accessibility isn't a separate development track - it's simply good UX, which benefits not only the users directly affected, but practically every customer.
Pay special attention to colours
Sellvio's design templates give you great freedom in shaping your brand identity, but this also means the chosen colours need to be checked for web use. A shade isn't automatically a good choice for text or a button just because it works well in the logo.
Proper contrast between background and text is especially important, as is making sure that the meaning of a piece of information isn't conveyed by colour alone. It's not enough, for example, to mark a faulty form field with a red border - it's worth displaying a clear text message next to it as well, such as 'Please enter your email address' or 'The email address format is invalid.'
This isn't only a better solution from an accessibility perspective. Clear feedback reduces uncertainty, makes errors easier to fix, and ultimately makes the whole purchase process smoother.
Alongside product images, alternative text is no side issue either
In a webshop, the product image is one of the most important sales tools - but not every customer perceives it the same way. For users relying on screen readers, it's therefore important that the key images carry genuinely informative alternative text.
Solutions like 'IMG_45782.jpg' or simply naming it 'image' provide practically no help at all. Far more useful is a description such as: 'Black women's leather ankle boots with a side zip.' That conveys briefly yet clearly the information the image carries visually.
What's more, alternative text isn't exclusively an accessibility matter. Well-structured, clearly interpretable content is also easier to process for search engines and other machine systems. This is the point where accessibility, technical SEO and AI-based findability meet: important information shouldn't just be visible - it should also appear in a machine-readable form.
Can you complete a purchase using only the keyboard?
One of the simplest accessibility tests requires nothing special: just set the mouse aside and try to use your webshop with the keyboard alone.
It's worth walking the same path a customer would, checking whether the menu is reachable, the categories can be opened, a product variant can be selected, the product can be added to the cart, the quantity can be changed, and then whether shipping and payment can be handled. Along the way, also watch whether it's always clearly visible which element currently has focus. If navigation breaks somewhere, a button is unreachable, or the focus indicator disappears, that can already signal a real usability problem. Wherever you get stuck with the keyboard, there's a good chance a customer who can't use a mouse will get stuck too.
Third-party integrations aren't 'someone else's problem' either
A modern webshop can connect to numerous external services these days: a payment solution, a pickup point selector, a chatbot, a review system, a marketing popup, a cookie manager or some custom application. Sellvio itself offers more than 70 ready-made integrations for payment, invoicing, shipping, chatbot and marketing systems, among others.
From an accessibility perspective, however, it's not enough to assume that because an interface was built by an external provider, it's their concern. Under Hungarian regulation, the service provider remains responsible for meeting the accessibility requirements even when part of the service is delivered by a subcontractor or external partner. This makes reviewing the third-party solutions embedded in the purchase flow especially important. Even a technically sound webshop fails to deliver a truly accessible shopping experience if, say, the pickup point selector or the card payment interface can't be operated by keyboard, is hard to interpret with a screen reader, or keeps critical information out of reach.
Accessibility is worth examining not only on the webshop's own interface, but across every embedded element of the entire purchase process.
What should you do now as a Sellvio webshop owner?
The first thing to clarify is whether the EAA's service requirements apply to your business at all. For this you need to examine the company's size, headcount and financial figures, and whether you sell B2C, B2B or a mix of the two. If the webshop is affected, a complete redesign isn't necessarily the first step. It's far more sensible to start with an accessibility audit that reviews the navigation, contrasts, heading structure, image alternative texts, forms, product variant handling, keyboard navigation, and the workings of the cart, checkout, payment and third-party integrations.
Automated checks provide a good starting point for this, but they're not sufficient on their own. The webshop should also be tested through real purchase flows, with a keyboard and, where possible, a screen reader.
After that, a sensible development order can be established: deal first with the errors that can genuinely obstruct browsing, using the cart, or completing a purchase.
A good webshop doesn't need a separate 'accessible version'
This is perhaps one of the most important lessons of the whole regulation. The ideal solution is not to build a separate 'accessible version' somewhere alongside the regular webshop, but to make the store itself as usable as possible for as many people as possible. A good e-commerce system is fast, mobile-friendly, logically structured, easy to navigate and understandable. These are the very same principles accessible operation requires, so a significant share of the improvements can be useful not just for compliance - they can enhance the entire customer experience.
A well-thought-out accessibility project can result in a simpler checkout, fewer misunderstandings, fewer data entry errors and a wider reachable customer base, which is exactly why it's worth viewing not merely as a regulatory cost, but as an upgrade to the webshop's quality.
Sellvio's operating logic is likewise built on the idea that the technical background should put as few obstacles as possible between the merchant and the customer. The EAA now adds one more consideration: a modern webshop is truly good when it doesn't just run fast and look good, but is genuinely usable by as many people as possible.
Legal note: this article serves general information purposes and does not constitute individual legal advice. To determine a specific business's obligations under the EAA, the company's size, activities, products sold, target markets and sales model need to be examined separately.