The paragraph and the checkout
Fifteen months of the European Accessibility Act: what gets fined, and where customers get stuck
In March the Dutch consumer regulator reported on a test of about a hundred of the country's biggest online stores, telecom and energy sites. It had tried to shop at each one with assistive technology, the kind blind and partially sighted people rely on. At 61% of them it could not place an order.
Sometimes the order button could not be reached with a keyboard. Sometimes a puzzle meant to prove you are human could not be solved without seeing it. At another 33%, ordering was possible but took far more effort.
The regulator's own summary puts it plainly: an inaccessible webshop costs customers, with and without a disability.
Fined · Czechia
The paragraph
Europe's accessibility law has covered online shops since 28 June 2025. We went through what the authorities of all twenty-seven EU countries have published since. We found four fines, all in Czechia, where the inspectorate publishes every fine as a public spreadsheet.
They add up to fourteen thousand crowns, about €580. The smallest, CZK 1,000 or about €41, became final on 11 June against a jewellery retailer.
None of the four is for a checkout a customer could not use. All four are for breaking one rule in the Czech law: a shop must explain, in its terms and conditions, how its service is accessible. The inspection records show who was fined: a jewellery chain, a sportswear shop, a home-textiles shop and the company that runs Brno's motor-racing circuit.
The law allows up to CZK 1,000,000 for this. For a website that is actually inaccessible, it allows ten times more.
Where customers get stuck · Netherlands, France, Czechia, Sweden, Germany, Finland
The checkout
The paragraph is what gets fined. The checkout is what the inspectors keep finding.
France's consumer watchdog has checked more than 20 shopping sites this year and found problems at more than half of them. Several platforms have promised to fix their sites by the end of 2026. In the spring the Czech inspectorate checked 47 online shops for accessibility and found breaches at 10.
Sweden's regulator is testing the part of each site where people actually shop. It opened cases against 17 large online shops in 2025 and 11 more in March.
Customers are also writing in. By August Germany's regulator held 115 tips and requests about online shops. Finland's regulator got 24 complaints about digital services in 2025.
Why so slow · the rest of the EU
Advice before fines
Fines are slow partly because the machinery is new, and partly by design.
Some countries are still building. In January the European Commission warned nine countries that their versions of the law were incomplete, including the rules on enforcement. In March it warned Germany and Croatia again. Spain set up a unit to coordinate its regional inspectors only in February 2026. Germany's regulator started work in September 2025 and by June had almost 700 complaints and notices to work through.
Others advise first on purpose. Austria reported 84 cases in the first year, mostly against banks, and no fines. Finland's regulator answered most complaints with advice, and its law has no fines at all. In Hungary a fine can only follow a warning the company ignores. Italy's regulator moves to penalties only after "prolonged inaction". In Denmark the regulator cannot fine anyone; that is a job for the police.
In court · France
"Not only a little accessible"
The customers did not wait. Two French disability groups took four grocery chains to court. Against Carrefour they brought statements from three users and video recordings of the site.
Carrefour's own accessibility statement rated its site at 71.21%. The judge in Caen said that was not enough. From the ruling, in our translation:
A shopping site "cannot be only a little accessible; it must be fully so."
The ruling gives Carrefour six months to fix its website and app. After that it owes €500 for every day they are not. It also awarded the two groups €10,000 in interim damages. That one payment is about seventeen times all four Czech fines put together.
It could have gone the other way. A month earlier a court in Lille threw out the same case against Auchan's online shop. It applied an older French law that only covers companies with more than €250 million in turnover. The groups have appealed.
Who can sue · Spain, Ireland, Germany, Italy, Poland
A door that is not open everywhere
France is the only country where we found a case, and not every country leaves the door open. Spain's law lets customers and disability organisations go to court. In Ireland a customer can ask the Circuit Court for an order to comply. We found no case in either yet.
In Germany, associations can ask the regulator to act, but not sue a shop under the accessibility law. The federal conciliation board could only log accessibility complaints in 2025, not handle them, for lack of staff. In Italy and Poland the accessibility law offers customers a complaint, not a lawsuit.
Heard and unheard
Quiet is not the same as none
Most countries publish no list of individual fines, so for them "no fines" means none that we could see. Latvia, Hungary and Slovakia do publish their decisions. We read them all, and none is under the accessibility law yet.
Loud is not the same as real, either. One first-year review reports a German fine in the "upper-five-figure range", issued by a federal export-control office. That office is not mentioned anywhere in the German law. The same review gives a reference number for Spain's accessibility law that belongs to a ruling about water rights in the town of Ibi. And the €90,000 fine against the airline Vueling was issued in 2020, under an older Spanish law.
In common
What to fix first
Fifteen months in, the pattern holds everywhere we looked. Regulators fine the paperwork, slowly. Inspectors, courts and customers go straight to the checkout.
So fix both, in that order. The accessibility paragraph in your terms takes a day, and it is the only thing anyone has been fined for. Then walk the way from your home page to a finished order with a keyboard and a screen reader. That is where the Dutch regulator got stuck, and where your customers already do.
Regulators read the terms first. Customers start at the checkout.
Checked 25 September 2026. The Czech list of fines runs to 29 June 2026, and more Czech fines are likely. The French cases against E.Leclerc and Picard had no published decision. We could not search the German and French regulators' records directly. Our summary of each country's law, with sources, is open data.