How to adapt a website to the requirements of the Act on the accessibility of products and services in the e-commerce sector?

On June 28, 2025, the Act on ensuring compliance with accessibility requirements for certain products and services by economic operators (hereinafter: “the Act”) entered into force.

It implements into Polish law Directive (EU) 2019/882 of the European Parliament and of the Council of April 17, 2019, on the accessibility requirements for products and services.

The purpose of the Act is to adapt the products and services specified in the Act to accessibility requirements in order to facilitate access to them for as many people as possible (regardless of their abilities or needs) and to increase the openness of societies and businesses to the diverse needs of people.

The catalog of products and services covered by the Act is quite broad.

What services does the Act regulate?

In terms of services, the regulation applies to services offered or provided to consumers, including, among others:

• telecommunications services,
• retail banking (including, for example, electronic banking and online payments),
• passenger transport services (e.g., ticket reservation systems), e-commerce – i.e., online stores and B2C (business-to-consumer) sales platforms,
• as well as audiovisual media services (e.g., VOD services).

Importantly, these obligations will not apply to micro-entrepreneurs. A service provider may also be exempted from these obligations if it can demonstrate that they would constitute a disproportionate burden. 

What about services in the e-commerce industry?

Among the many services regulated by the Act is also the service of electronic commerce, understood as a service provided at a distance via websites and mobile devices, by electronic means and at the individual request of a consumer for the purpose of concluding a consumer contract.

This involves the requirement to ensure the perceptibility, operability, understandability, and robustness of functions and methods used for identification, security, payment, and electronic signatures, when they form part of the service offered.

The website or mobile application of a store must comply with the requirements of the Act, regardless of whether the products sold through it are covered by the Act. These requirements are based on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

Perceivability

This requirement relates to finding a so-called text alternative to enable users to understand the content in a way that they can perceive. It consists of:

• descriptive identification of audio and video content and other time-based media
• using solutions that facilitate viewing and listening to content and separate information from the background
• ensuring that content can be adapted so that it can be presented in different forms without losing information or structure

In addition, purely decorative elements should be implemented in such a way that assistive technologies can ignore them.

Time-based media are audio and video media to which a text alternative or audio description should be added.

The draft law also draws attention to the possibility of adapting content on the website. This means that if there are instructions on the website, they cannot be based solely on sensory elements (e.g., click the red button), and the content should not limit the view to a single option and display orientation.

In addition, the content should be easy for the user to separate from the background (e.g., for automatically played audio lasting longer than 3 seconds, a mechanism for pausing, turning off, or controlling the volume should be provided).

Operability

Functionality that applies to user interface and navigation elements:

• Ensure that all functionality is accessible from the keyboard (e.g., access via single-point gestures)
• Ensure sufficient time for users to interact with the content (if time is limited, the user should be able to disable, adjust, or extend the time limit and be warned of the time limit if it could result in loss of data)
• Eliminate the risk of epileptic seizures through the presentation of content (content must not flash more than 3 times per second)
• Ensure good navigation on the site (e.g., navigation menu, titles, headings)

Understandability

• Formulate content in a way that is readable and understandable (default language specified by the program, provide a mechanism for checking the meaning of abbreviations, additional explanatory texts, a mechanism for checking the pronunciation of words)
• Create the website in a way that is predictable for the user (no unexpected changes in the interface context)
• Help with entering information (avoiding and correcting errors)

Robustness

The aim is to ensure the greatest possible compatibility with the user’s current and future programs and assistive technologies.

• Codes must have complete tags, be nested according to the specification, and have no duplicate attributes
• For all user interface components, their name, role, state, properties, and values should be programmatically determined and accessible to assistive technologies

Sanctions

The Act provides that economic operators, including service providers, are given the opportunity to remedy non-compliance before financial penalties are imposed.

Market surveillance authorities (in response to a consumer complaint or as a result of an inspection) first call for corrective action, setting a deadline for this. Only failure to respond or continued non-compliance may lead to the imposition of the prescribed penalty.

In view of the above guidelines, it is worth conducting a professional accessibility audit, and our law firm can provide you with comprehensive support in assessing and implementing the requirements, guaranteeing full compliance of your website with the applicable standards. Please feel free to contact us.