EN 301 549, the European accessibility standard

What is EN 301 549?

EN 301 549 is the harmonised European standard for accessibility of ICT products and services. It defines testable requirements for websites, mobile apps, documents, software and hardware. EU public-sector bodies already use it under the Web Accessibility Directive, and it’s the reference standard for demonstrating European Accessibility Act conformance.

How it relates to WCAG

For web content, EN 301 549 incorporates the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) at Level A and AA. In other words, if your website meets WCAG 2.2 AA, you’ve satisfied the core web requirements of EN 301 549. The standard adds further clauses for non-web software, documents, and hardware, plus functional performance statements.

What web teams need to do

• Meet every applicable WCAG 2.2 Level A and AA success criterion.
• Ensure mobile apps and PDFs you publish are accessible too.
• Document conformance in an accessibility statement.
• Re-test when you ship significant changes.

Start with the web essentials

The fastest way to make progress is to fix the machine-detectable issues first, then move on to manual testing. Our free scanner maps each finding to its WCAG 2.2 criterion — the same criteria EN 301 549 references.