Every way companies meet the European Accessibility Act, priced side by side
There are six ways to meet the European Accessibility Act, from a widget installed in one script tag to a fixed-price review by a named testing firm. Not sure the Act catches you at all? The free assessment answers that first, with nothing to sign. And one price below is different in kind: a ComplianceSME account is not an accessibility product but the whole compliance estate, 116 EU and UK obligation registers with the Accessibility Act among them. This page sets out what each one produces, what each one costs as published, and where ComplianceSME sits on Directive (EU) 2019/882. Every figure is as published by its named source on 13 October 2026.
The law this page is published under. Comparative advertising that names competitors is lawful in the United Kingdom and the European Union, under the Business Protection from Misleading Marketing Regulations 2008 and Directive 2006/114/EC, where the comparison is objective, verifiable and compares services meeting the same need without misleading or denigrating. This page is built to those conditions: every figure is quoted as published by its source and dated, each route's genuine strength is stated, anything said against a named product is said in the words of a regulator or a standards body on the record, and all trademarks belong to their owners with no affiliation or endorsement implied. If any figure here is out of date, toolkit@compliancesme.com corrects it on evidence.
The bench
| Route | What it produces | Coverage against EN 301 549 and WCAG | Published cost | What it does well |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overlay widget accessiBe accessWidget, UserWay, AudioEye, EqualWeb | Run-time changes to the page in the browser, a scan report, a generated accessibility statement | WCAG success criteria, with EN 301 549 and Section 508 as mappings | accessWidget 59 to 479 dollars a month, or 490 to 3,990 dollars a year, Enterprise on application; UserWay 490 to 2,490 dollars a year; AudioEye and EqualWeb publish no price | Installed from one script tag, reader-facing adjustment controls, and the price is published rather than quoted |
| Scanner and monitoring platform Pope Tech, Siteimprove, Silktide, Acquia Optimize, Level Access, TPGi ARC, Deque axe | Automated scan reports, issue lists by page and by rule, monitoring dashboards, regression alerts | WCAG success criteria across the crawled estate, with EN 301 549 and Section 508 mappings | Pope Tech free to 25 pages, then 25 to 400 dollars a month; Siteimprove lists 8,000 to 28,700 pounds a licence on the UK Government Digital Marketplace; the rest publish no price | Real defects found in real code across every page, and a regression caught the week it ships |
| Audit and VPAT service Accessible.org, DigitalA11y | A manual audit report against named success criteria, and a VPAT signed by the testing organisation | WCAG, Section 508 and EN 301 549 as separate VPAT editions | Audits 100 to 350 dollars a page; VPAT 350 to 2,500 dollars and above by edition; user testing 550 dollars a session; support 50 to 195 dollars an hour | Testing with assistive technology and with disabled people, which no scan and no document replaces, and the VPAT public buyers ask for |
| Consultant and fixed-price review AbilityNet, suppliers on the UK Government Digital Marketplace | A reviewed report, remediation advice, support in drafting a statement | Scoped to the pages reviewed | AbilityNet fixed at 4,950 pounds plus VAT for up to ten pages, statement support included; Marketplace day rates 530 to 1,650 pounds | A named person accountable for the finding, and the remediation work itself |
| Free tools and official texts axe DevTools, WAVE, Google Lighthouse, the W3C statement generator, ETSI, W3C, ITI | Browser-based scans, a drafted accessibility statement, the standard and the guidelines themselves | WCAG, and EN 301 549 v3.2.1 in full as the standard text | Nothing; the WAVE API is metered from 4 cents a credit | The scan an engineer runs before anything is bought, and the W3C generator drafts a statement at no cost |
| ComplianceSME | The Article 13 and Annex V public accessibility statement, the Article 14 and Annex VI disproportionate burden assessment, and the Article 7 product paperwork where products are in scope, the article cited on every line | A different axis from a WCAG score: the Directive's own obligations, one of 116 EU and UK obligation registers on the same account | 240 pounds a month all in buys the whole compliance account at the Small level, 64 registers with the European Accessibility Act one of them | The written record the Directive names, produced from the Directive's own words, across the whole obligation register |
The code and the record
This Directive asks for two different things, and no single supplier on this page delivers both. The first is a page that works: contrast that passes, inputs that carry labels, links and buttons that have names, images that have alt text, components a keyboard can drive. WebAIM's February 2026 reading of one million home pages puts 96 per cent of all detected errors in six categories of that kind, and not one of them is fixed by a document. That half is engineering and design, the fix belongs to a developer and the sign-off belongs to a tester using assistive technology. The second is the record: the Article 13 and Annex V statement describing how the Annex I requirements are met, and the Article 14 and Annex VI assessment where disproportionate burden is relied on. That half is ours. A supplier telling you either half covers the other is making the claim the Federal Trade Commission's order of 3 January 2025 exists to stop, on a duty the tribunal judiciaire de Caen treated on 4 June 2026 as an obligation of result: the court ordered Carrefour to make carrefour.fr and its app fully accessible within six months under astreinte, and rejected the argument that its rate of conformity of 71 per cent was sufficient.
The questions this page gets asked
We already have an accessibility widget on the site. What is worth checking?
Start with what the widget has not changed in your code. Deque, whose axe engine runs under much of this market, states on its own pages that its tools reach up to 80 per cent of issues and that manual testing is then used for the more complex ones. WebAIM's caveat on scanning is blunter: “Absence of detected errors does not indicate that a page is accessible or conformant.” In February 2026 WebAIM found detected WCAG 2 failures on 95.9 per cent of the top million home pages, averaging 56.1 errors each, up on the year before.
What does accessiBe cost for a small business?
accessWidget publishes its price: 59 dollars a month or 490 dollars a year on Micro, capped at 5,000 visits, 179 a month or 1,490 a year on Growth, 479 a month or 3,990 a year on Scale, and Enterprise on application. The accessFlow developer product publishes none. Publishing a price at all puts this vendor in a minority here, since AudioEye, Level Access, Silktide, Acquia Optimize, TPGi and EqualWeb all quote on request.
Is there a cheaper alternative to accessiBe or UserWay?
For scanning, free. axe DevTools, WAVE and Google Lighthouse all run in a browser at no cost, and Pope Tech's WAVE-engine service is free to 25 pages, then 25 dollars a month on an annual Team plan. UserWay's own floor is 490 dollars a year on Small, capped at 100,000 pageviews. What none of them produce is the Annex V statement or the Annex VI assessment.
Does Siteimprove cover the European Accessibility Act?
Siteimprove crawls a site and measures it against WCAG, with EN 301 549 and Section 508 given as mappings, and monitoring an estate over time is what it is built for. It publishes no price on its own site; its UK Government Digital Marketplace listing states 8,000 to 28,700 pounds a licence. One thing to hold in mind on coverage: EN 301 549 is wider than WCAG, reaching hardware, closed functionality and real-time communication, so WCAG AA conformance answers part of the standard rather than all of it.
Is an accessibility overlay enough for the European Accessibility Act?
Two statements on the public record answer that. The European Disability Forum and the International Association of Accessibility Professionals, jointly on 17 May 2023: “Overlays do not make the website accessible or compliant with European accessibility legislation.” And on 3 January 2025 the Federal Trade Commission issued a 1,000,000 dollar order against accessiBe over claims that its AI product could make websites WCAG-compliant. The order bars representations that automated products “can make any website WCAG-compliant or can ensure continued compliance” absent supporting evidence, and bars presenting third-party reviews as independent.
What does an accessibility audit cost?
Published fees run per page or per review. Accessible.org charges 100 to 250 dollars a primary page, 195 dollars an hour for support, 550 dollars a user testing session and 4 dollars a page for PDF remediation. DigitalA11y charges 100 to 350 dollars a page, puts a ten-page site at 1,000 to 3,000 dollars, and publishes a retainer at 800 dollars a month. AbilityNet's Digital Accessibility Review in the UK is fixed at 4,950 pounds plus VAT for up to ten pages, with statement support included. Day rates on the Government Digital Marketplace run 530 pounds at Sopra Steria and 550 to 1,650 pounds at CDS. What the fee buys that software does not is testing with assistive technology and with disabled people.
Can a free generator write our accessibility statement?
W3C publishes an accessibility statement generator and it costs nothing, so run it and see what comes out. It is built round the template of the public sector Web Accessibility Directive rather than Annex I and Annex V of this one, so its output is not the statement a private service provider owes: that has to describe how the Annex I requirements are met, be given in written and oral form including an accessible form, sit in the general terms and conditions or their equivalent, and be kept for as long as the service runs.
Can AI write our Annex V accessibility statement?
It can produce the document, and what matters is what it is working from. Our toolkit teaches the Directive first to whoever runs it, then interviews the business, and every line of the statement and of the burden assessment carries the article behind it. What it does not do is change your code or sign off your conformance. The fix is a developer's and the sign-off is a tester's.
We have a VPAT. Does that cover the European Accessibility Act?
A VPAT is a product conformance statement, and the template itself is free from ITI. It is not the Article 13 and Annex V public statement, and it is not the Article 14 and Annex VI burden assessment. Priced VPAT work follows the edition: Accessible.org charges 350 dollars for the WCAG edition, 550 for Section 508, 650 for EN 301 549 and 950 for International, on top of the audit, and DigitalA11y publishes from 1,000 to 2,500 dollars and above. Public buyers ask for the VPAT in procurement, which is a real reason to hold one.
Does the European Accessibility Act apply to a small business?
The microenterprise exemption is narrower than it reads. Article 3 sets it at fewer than 10 persons and turnover or balance sheet total not over 2 million euros, and both halves have to be met. Article 4(5) then exempts microenterprises providing services only. A microenterprise dealing in products stays bound by the requirements, and Article 14 relieves it of documenting the disproportionate burden assessment rather than of the requirements themselves.
When did the European Accessibility Act start to apply?
Member States transposed it by 28 June 2022 and it has applied since 28 June 2025. Accessible answering of emergency communications could run to 28 June 2027, and Article 32 allows products lawfully used before that date to transition to 28 June 2030, service contracts to run to expiry capped at five years, and self-service terminals to run to the end of their economic life capped at 20 years. Germany's market surveillance body for this law, the MLBF in Magdeburg, covers all 16 states and takes consumer reports.
What is the fine for breaking the European Accessibility Act?
Article 30 leaves the amounts to each Member State and requires penalties that are effective, proportionate and dissuasive. Germany publishes its figures: section 37(2) of the BFSG sets up to 100,000 euros for placing non-compliant products on the market, providing non-accessible services and CE marking breaches, and up to 10,000 euros for other breaches. Figures circulating for other Member States could not be traced to a primary source, so this page does not carry them.
Does the European Accessibility Act apply in the UK?
No. The UK did not transpose it, and the duty on a UK service provider is section 20 of the Equality Act 2010, reasonable adjustments. The EHRC's statutory services code describes that duty as anticipatory: a service provider “must think in advance and on an ongoing basis” about what disabled people might reasonably need. There is no statutory technical standard and no regulator fine schedule for a private website; the route is an individual claim, which is the shape where a dated record of what was assessed and decided carries weight.
What is the cheapest way to get an Annex V accessibility statement?
The free company compliance assessment first. It costs nothing and settles whether the Directive binds you and in which role, manufacturer, importer, distributor or service provider. The 240 pounds a month all in buys the whole compliance account at the Small level, 64 EU and UK obligation registers with the European Accessibility Act one of them. It produces the Annex V statement, the Annex VI assessment and the Article 7 product paperwork where products are in scope, every duty cited to its article.
What does ComplianceSME not do?
We do not scan your website, we do not watch it for regressions, we do not remediate code, and we do not test with assistive technology or with disabled users. We produce no VPAT. Those are the parts of this market that work on the page itself, and they need a developer and a tester. What we produce is the written record the Directive names, kept current as the law moves.
Figures read 13 October 2026 from each vendor's own published pricing pages, except the Siteimprove band and the Sopra Steria and CDS day rates, which are from those suppliers' UK Government Digital Marketplace listings. Error rates, the average per page and the six error categories from the WebAIM Million, February 2026; the caveat on detected errors from WebAIM's own page. The automation figure from Deque's published axe pages. The joint statement of 17 May 2023 from the European Disability Forum and the International Association of Accessibility Professionals. The order of 3 January 2025 from the Federal Trade Commission's own notice, case 2223156. The judgment of 4 June 2026 from the tribunal judiciaire de Caen, as reported by handicap.fr. Directive (EU) 2019/882 articles and annexes from EUR-Lex. EN 301 549 v3.2.1, published in 2021, from ETSI, and it remains the version cited as the reference standard. The German penalty from section 37 of the BFSG at gesetze-im-internet.de and the market surveillance body from its own site. Section 20 of the Equality Act 2010 from legislation.gov.uk and the anticipatory duty from chapter 7 of the EHRC statutory code for services. All trademarks belong to their owners. Corrections on evidence to toolkit@compliancesme.com.