The European Accessibility Act (EAA) focuses on process over perfection. Businesses can avoid fines and penalties by following a clear process for handling accessibility complaints.
The key first step is having an accessibility statement on your website – this is required even if you qualify for exemptions.
If a consumer reports an issue, the business must respond within one week, update the accessibility statement within a month if the issue is valid, and resolve the issue within three months. Once fixed, the business must validate the solution, update the statement again, and notify the consumer.
This proactive process helps businesses stay compliant and avoid regulatory intervention.
Transcript
Your business can avoid fines and penalties with the European Accessibility Act without having to be perfect all the time. That’s the good news. Here’s how you do it.
The individual countries have implemented the European Accessibility Act into their national laws. When they’ve done this, they have emphasized the process over perfection, meaning that businesses and consumers can get their issues resolved without having to get regulators involved.
This is a win-win situation for for everyone. Customers can get their accessibility issues resolved quickly, and businesses can avoid all of the red tape involved with regulators, as well as the fines and other legal headaches. It’s all about following the process. Here is the process broken down for you.
Do You Have an Accessibility Statement?
The first step is that every business who is doing business with Europe needs to have an accessibility statement on their website. This includes micro enterprises and those who may have other exemptions under the EAA.
The reason is, consumers have absolutely no idea whether you qualify for an exemption or not. The only way they can know is by going to your accessibility statement and reading the information there. If you don’t have one, Then they get to go straight to the regulator.
The first thing the regulator does, they look at your accessibility statement. If you don’t have one, they may not have any idea that you have an exemption either, which means they get involved, and it’s a whole lot of legal headaches and red tape for you to deal with. The way around it is to have a good accessibility statement.
Consumer Accessibility Complaints
The first step in the process is that the consumer will contact you using the information in your accessibility statement. Once you have been contacted by the consumer, you are going to go ahead and read what they wrote. They’ve presented you with an accessibility issue. You need to determine whether this is a valid issue or not.
To do this, you need expertise and understanding. You have one week from the moment they contact you to determine what to do. Within that week, you need to reply to them and let them know what the next steps are.
That might be that you need more information from them. It might be to inform them that what they need is actually already available, or it might be that this is an actual accessibility issue that they have found and you are going to work on it.
Update Your Accessibility Statement
The third step in the process, if this is a valid issue, then you need to update your accessibility statement and note this issue. You also need to provide an estimated time of resolution, and that time needs to be within three months of when the customer contacted you. Of course, once this information is available, you need to reply back to the customer to keep them up to date. You have one month from the time they contact you to do this.
The fourth step in the process is to fix the issue and validate the fix. It’s never fixed until you’ve actually had someone validate it. Once you validated it, you can update your accessibility statement to know that it’s now… Once you have fixed it, you can update your accessibility statement to note that it is now a resolved issue.
Contact the Customer
Of course, you need to contact the customer back and let them know that their issue has been resolved. What you need to do now is get your process together. If you don’t already have an accessibility statement, you need to get one together ASAP. If you don’t already have one, you need to get your accessibility statement together immediately.
This is the most essential part of the process. That’s the very first step. Without the first step, there is no process. If you don’t already have an accessibility statement, you need to get one together immediately. This is the essential first step in the process.
The process is how you avoid fines, penalties, and other red tape involved with regulators, because no business wants to get involved in that.
Need Help Getting Things in Order?
If you need help getting your accessibility statement or your process in order, let me know. I’m available at easyallyguide.com/consult. If you enjoyed this video and found it helpful, please give it a like and subscribe to the channel. Of course, stay tuned for more information about the European Accessibility Act.