News & Trends

The European Accessibility Act started applying on 28 June 2025. That date flipped accessibility from "nice to have" into enforceable market law for specific products and consumer services across the EU.

For Pro AV, this is where accessibility stops being slide 47 in a policy deck and becomes part of your delivery checklist. It shows up in tender requirements. It shows up in procurement frameworks. It shows up when your client asks, three days before go-live, whether the kiosk UI works without a mouse.

This costs real money. Not because you need to become an accessibility auditor overnight, but because you now ship systems that real humans can use—and you need to prove it without wrecking your project margin.

Suggested Reading: EAA 2025: A Guide for AV Producers on Accessibility Compliance

What's in scope for Pro AV

Important for you to remember is that the EAA doesn't demand “accessibility everywhere.” It targets specific product and service categories. Several sit directly on top of what Pro AV delivers.

Interactive self-service terminals—ticketing machines, check-in kiosks, wayfinding screens—are explicitly in scope. So are consumer devices used to access audiovisual media services. That's why integrators keep landing in this conversation, even when "accessibility" isn't listed as a project deliverable.

Add one uncomfortable fact: Pro AV merged with IT years ago. Most AV "installations" are now full digital experiences—screens, apps, web portals, booking flows, QR handoffs, support content. That stack creates compliance friction fast. Not because AV professionals don't care, but because many neglected to budget for it.

The standards buyers actually use

Most clients know one phrase: "WCAG AA."

That's sometimes the right shorthand. But in EU procurement, the standard you'll actually see in tenders is EN 301 549—a harmonised European spec that covers ICT accessibility requirements and test methods. It gives buyers something concrete to write into an RFP and verify during acceptance.

WCAG 2.1 still dominates for web content and interfaces. Since many AV touchpoints now behave like web apps—room booking panels, digital signage control, event platforms—WCAG has become a practical reality whether you planned for it or not.

Bottom line: if you deliver any UI, interactive screen, or software layer around AV, your clients expect you to speak EN 301 549 and WCAG fluently enough to avoid expensive mistakes.

Where AV gets hit first

You feel the EAA where AV meets users' hands, eyes, and ears.

Meeting room controls are high on the list. A clean-looking touch panel still fails if it uses tiny tap targets, low contrast, or assumes everyone can tap accurately. Room booking screens and visitor check-in flows share the same risk.

Interactive signage and wayfinding kiosks sit right in the blast zone. They're deployed in public and semi-public spaces. They assume perfect vision, fine motor control, and no time pressure. Real users don't arrive that way.

Hybrid events add operational pressure. Clients expect seamless join flows, legible on-screen text, usable controls, and support for live captions or remote interpretation. That entire experience now carries legal and reputational weight it didn't carry three years ago.

None of this is theoretical. The main question is "does your system work for people who aren't ‘the developer’”?

Six months in: procurement does the enforcing

You don't wait for regulators to knock. Buyers enforce the EAA for them.

Six months in, the pattern is predictable:

You pitch a system. The tender includes EN 301 549 or WCAG language. Your vendor says "we're working on it." Your PM asks you to sign off anyway. Then the client asks for proof.

That proof might be a conformance statement, test results, or a documented acceptance checklist. If you can't produce it, you look like the risky option.

This is where accessibility becomes commercial strategy. It's no longer just design quality. It's a reason you win or lose the tender.

Where Enforcement Actually Happens

The EAA is EU-wide law, but enforcement lives at member state level. That matters because penalty structures, designated enforcement bodies, and implementation timelines vary significantly across Europe. If you're bidding on a project in Germany, the risk profile looks different than one in Portugal or Sweden.

The widget below maps enforcement reality across EU member states. It shows maximum fine levels, which national bodies handle compliance checks, and current implementation status. Use it when you're scoping cross-border projects, writing risk sections in tender responses, or explaining to a client why accessibility compliance isn't optional anymore. The countries with the steepest fines and most active enforcement bodies are where you'll see the tightest procurement language and the most detailed conformance requests. Know where your project lands, and price accordingly.

Why this works:

• It's concrete and actionable (helps with scoping, tenders, client conversations)
  
• It reinforces the commercial/risk angle you've established
  
• It explains why the reader should care about the widget (not just "here's a map")
  
• It ties directly to the pricing and procurement themes in the article
  
• The tone matches the rest: direct, practical, no fluff
  

What to change in build and delivery

You don't fix this by adding one feature at handover. You fix it by reordering the work.

Start by mapping every user touchpoint. Anything interactive counts: room controls, kiosks, web portals, mobile apps, embedded video players, support pages, onboarding screens, QR steps.

Run a ruthless "what breaks" audit early. Keep it practical:

• Can someone navigate without a mouse?
  
• Do focus states appear when they tab through?
  
• Can they read key text under bright overhead light?
  
• Can they operate it one-handed?
  
• Can they recover from errors without guessing?
  

This isn't a perfect audit. It's project protection. It stops you shipping a system that fails the first serious check.

Bake accessibility into commissioning. Add a short accessibility acceptance pack to your handover documentation. Include keyboard navigation checks, contrast verification, UI consistency review, and any accessibility settings you enabled or configured.

Document what you did. If the system supports accessibility through settings, say so clearly. If it doesn't, say that too. Silence may kill you six months later.

The trap: "we'll fix it next time"

Many teams push this into the future roadmap. They'll handle it in the next UI version, the next firmware drop, the next platform refresh.

That strategy fails because the EAA shapes procurement now. Your client doesn't care about a vendor's roadmap. They care what ships on their project timeline.

You need an honest position:

If the platform meets the requirement, commit and document it. If it can't, you either swap platforms or write the limitation explicitly into scope.

That second option feels uncomfortable. But it saves you later. It turns "surprise failure at handover" into "documented constraint agreed at contract."

Content and operations matter, too

Accessibility isn't only the hardware you rack or the software you configure. It's also what your client publishes and runs day-to-day.

If the digital signage content team uses unreadable layouts, your perfect LED wall still fails real users. If the events team buries key session info in eight-point text, your flawless camera setup doesn't help. If the IT support path is a scanned PDF with no alt text, the whole system becomes hostile.

Pro AV teams need to push one layer up. You don't own all content, but you can set guardrails. Provide templates. Run a quick review pass. Configure sensible defaults that prevent obvious failures.

That's not scope creep but should be considered rather as delivery quality.

My verdict

Six months after the EAA took effect, accessibility is a project risk on par with cybersecurity, power design, and network architecture. Ignore it and you pay later—in rework, lost trust, and failed tenders.

The fix isn't heroic. It's boring and repeatable: map your touchpoints, run a basic failure check early, lock an acceptance checklist into commissioning, and document what you configured.

Do that and accessibility stops being a last-minute crisis—it becomes craft. And that's how you protect margin and schedule.

Main photo credit: Getty Images/RealPeopleGroup