Upcoming Enforcement of the European Accessibility Act: What You Should Know and How to Prepare
With the European Accessibility Act (EAA) enforcement deadline scheduled for 2025, VitalSource is ready to help you prepare for the upcoming mandate. The EAA focuses on ensuring equal access for Europeans with disabilities across various products and services, including e-books. With an enforcement deadline of 28 June 2025, this new legislation mandates that e-books must 'be designed and produced to maximise their use by people with disabilities'. We recommend that publishers take proactive steps now to check whether digital content meets the EAA’s upcoming mandates.
Since the 2019 release of our Content Transparency Initiative, we have been showcasing the accessibility metadata provided to us, helping users understand the mindful work you have done to meet standards, and supporting the claims made about the content markup. While we have made this visible in our storefronts for the past five years, we want to make sure this information about your content is complete and represents the claims you intended to make prior to providing visibility across our product suite. If you are unfamiliar with how the EAA legislation impacts ebooks, e-readers and e-commerce platforms where they’re accessible, be sure to schedule a meeting with your VitalSource representative to discuss our roadmap and plans.
In the meantime, we’ve gathered some useful links to help inform you about the EAA:
Content to Read
The European Accessibility Act and Book Publishing
E-books and the Impact of the European Accessibility
Websites to Browse
Born Accessible: A Benetech Initiative