Companies Must Adapt Their Websites for Persons with Disabilities Starting from June
Date: 28/04/2025
With the onset of digitalisation and the development of electronic services, legislative measures have been stepped up, the objectives of which include protecting consumers and ensuring the accessibility of services for all population groups. On 28 June 2025, Act No 351/2022 Coll. on the Accessibility of Products and Services for Persons with Disabilities ("the Act") will enter into force. The Act will bring a number of new obligations in relation to services provided to consumers, for which entrepreneurs and businesses should prepare. Otherwise, they may be fined up to EUR 30,000 by the Slovak Trade Inspection Authority.
To clarify, the term "accessibility" under the Act includes making products and services more accessible and perceptible, creating a more inclusive society. An environment with accessible products and services facilitates independent living for persons with disabilities (visual, hearing, mental, motoric...). The Act aims to promote the full and equal participation of persons with disabilities in society by improving access to everyday products and services.
The Act transposes into Slovak Law Directive (EU) 2019/882 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 April 2019 on the accessibility requirements for products and services (hereinafter referred to as the "EAA"). Its aim is to improve the functioning of the internal market for accessible products and services in the EU by removing barriers and extending accessibility requirements to a wider range of entities, products and services. The EAA legislation will therefore affect entities in both the public and private sectors.
However, it is important to note at the outset that the Act does not apply to micro-enterprises, i.e. enterprises employing less than 10 employees and whose annual turnover or balance sheet total does not exceed EUR 2 million. Apart from micro-enterprises, however, the Act affects a relatively wide range of entities.
Scope of services covered by the Act
The Act applies to several areas of services provided to consumers. These include, for example, air, bus, waterborne, and rail transport services, as well as financial services. However, the law also applies to information society services, which cover a number of "common" digital services, such as company websites, mobile applications, and e-shops. In this article, we will focus on this area.
The EAA legislation defines "information society services" as services provided for consideration, remotely, by electronic means and at the individual request of the recipient of the service. However, the definition must be interpreted broadly. This means that, for example, the term "for consideration" also includes services where users "pay" by means of non-monetary consideration, such as providing their personal data[1]. Therefore, in order to assess "consideration," it is particularly important to determine whether the purpose of the website is in any way to "attract" paying customers. Another defining feature of the term "at the request of the recipient" also includes the express or implied expression of the recipient's will, from which it is possible to infer their request for the provision of a service. The mere entry of a web address or the completion of any form on the internet can therefore also be classified as tacit consent by the user.
For this reason, the seemingly "inconspicuous" term "information society services" covers a wide range of services provided online, such as web hosting services, online data storage, online news portals, comment and user review features on websites, platforms for placing advertisements, online sales of goods and online commercial communications, electronic mail (except personal electronic mail), social networks, insurance services via the internet, internet connection services, booking services (e.g. hotel booking, travel agency services), auction servers, online search[2] and last but not least - all e-shops.
Obligations of service providers
Legislative changes will bring new obligations for service providers. E-shops and other affected businesses will have to adapt their websites to make them accessible, i.e. available and usable, for people with disabilities.
A complete technical redesign of websites and electronic services will be necessary to make their content more accessible to persons with disabilities and to enable them to make full use of the services provided despite their disability.
Services will now have to comply with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.2 (hereinafter referred to as "WCAG"). This is a technical standard developed by experts from the field, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Working Group. It specifies specific criteria that service providers must meet to ensure accessibility for all users. Among other things, these criteria are intended to ensure that the text on the website is fully accessible to screen readers and other similar technical aids used by persons with disabilities. It is essential that the website has sufficient colour contrast and keyboard navigation to enable persons with reduced motor skills to navigate it easily. Specific examples of functionalities to achieve the requirements include:
- Pre-recorded audio or video recording;
- Subtitles;
- Audio commentary;
- Motion activation, i.e. functions that can be controlled by moving the device or the user him/herself;
- Pointer gesture, i.e. if a function can be controlled using multiple fingers (such as the zoom-in function), the user must be able to perform this function in a simpler, alternative way (e.g. by pressing the zoom button);
- Consistent navigation and marking, meaning that within a set of web pages, the navigation layout and links appear in the same relative order;
- Minimum target size in pixels, meaning that compressible objects on a website must be at least the size of a finger touching the screen on a phone;
- Defining abbreviations and unusual phrases and words, including idioms and jargon, etc.
Service providers will also be required to publish an accessibility statement on their website, i.e. a formal document setting out basic information about the nature of the service provided to consumers and how accessibility requirements for persons with disabilities are met in relation to that service.
Exemptions
If meeting the above requirements represents a fundamental change in the nature of the service or an unreasonable burden for the service provider, the law allows companies to make use of an exemption. However, they must demonstrate the reasons for this and notify the regulatory authority, which is the Slovak Trade Inspection Authority (hereinafter referred to as “STI”).
Regulation No. 283/2023 of the Government of the Slovak Republic establishes criteria for assessing unreasonable burdens. The criteria mainly relate to:
- the ratio between the net costs of achieving compliance with accessibility requirements and the total costs (operating and capital expenditure) of producing, distributing or importing a product or providing a service to economic operators, i.e. a comparison of how much it will cost to make the product accessible and what proportion of the company's total costs this represents;
- estimated costs and benefits for economic operators, including production processes and investments in relation to the estimated benefits for persons with disabilities, taking into account the quantity and frequency of use of specific products or services, i.e. a comparison of estimates of how accessibility improvements will benefit the company and how they will benefit persons with disabilities;
- the ratio between the net costs of achieving compliance with accessibility requirements and the net turnover of the economic operator, i.e. a comparison of how much it will cost to achieve accessibility compared to the total turnover of the company,
Sanctions and Oversight
As already mentioned, the supervisory authority responsible for supervising compliance with the requirements under the Act and for ensuring that obligations are fulfilled, i.e. the regulatory authority, is the STI.
Violation of these obligations may result in penalties ranging from EUR 200 to 3% of the company's turnover, with the maximum fine depending on the severity of the offense and capped at EUR 30,000. For example, failure to provide information on the accessibility of a service may result in a fine of up to EUR 6,000, while failure to ensure basic accessibility requirements may cost a company up to EUR 20,000.
The STI may waive the imposition of a fine if the provider takes corrective action or demonstrates that compliance with the obligation would require a significant change to the service or would impose a disproportionate burden on the service provider.
It is worth noting that although the Act will come into effect soon (June 28, 2025), the STI, as well as any other public administration body, has not yet issued any detailed guidelines for its implementation. It is quite clear that it imposes a number of obligations on the entities concerned, the content and implementation of which give rise to many ambiguities. As is often the case in Slovakia, we will probably only find out what the supervisory authority considers to be the "correct" interpretation of the Act after the STI starts imposing the first penalties for its violation.
Transitional provisions
According to the regulations, accessibility requirements do not apply to services provided under contracts concluded before June 28, 2025. This exemption applies until the end of the contract's term, but no later than June 28, 2030.
Accessibility requirements do not apply to certain digital content on websites and mobile applications that are pre-recorded media published before the effective date of the Act, office file formats published before the effective date of the Act, and websites and mobile applications that are considered archives if they contain only content that is not updated or edited after the effective date of the Act. Therefore, accessibility requirements do not need to be met, for example, for documents uploaded to websites before June 28, 2025.
What should the operator of a commercial website do in relation to the Act?
We definitely do not recommend taking the law lightly. First, you need to determine whether the law applies to you, i.e.:
- whether you fall under the definition of an information society service provider; and
- whether an exemption for micro-enterprise applies to you.
If you have determined that you are subject to this Act, we recommend that you assess your website's compliance with the new legal requirements.
In this regard, we would like to point out that a considerable number of websites and businesses operating in the IT sector focus on this topic, some of which contain practical technical information, while others provide software (including free software) to verify website compliance with the EEA, and others offer paid consulting services to audit and harmonize websites and processes with the EAA legislation or the Act. As an example, we would like to draw attention to the services of testing the accessibility of websites and mobile applications for people with disabilities, which are provided (for consideration) by the Union of the Visually Impaired of Slovakia. Similar services are provided on the Slovak market by several other business entities.
The result of the "audit" of your website should be an assessment of whether it meets the legal requirements and, if not, what needs to be done to bring it into compliance with the law.
If you find that bringing your website into compliance with the requirements of the law represents an unreasonable burden for your business, you must notify and prove this to the STI.
We also recommend that you notify the STI if you find that you are unable to bring your website into compliance with the law by the date it comes into effect, in which case you should have an additional period of one year to take corrective action to bring your website into compliance.
Would you like to know whether the Act applies to your company, what options you have for applying for an exemption, or do you have any other questions regarding the Act? Please do not hesitate to contact us.
Tomáš Borecký, Attorney
Katarína Gurecková, Paralegal
[1] Husovec, M., RESPONSIBILITY ON THE INTERNET according to Czech and Slovak law, Publisher: CZ.NIC, z. s. p. o., CZ.NIC Edition, www.nic.cz, 1st edition, Prague 2014, p. 98
[2] Ibid, p. 101
