App-based businesses must not ignore Europe’s accessibility wake-up call: Jason Crispin
The digital economy does not stop neatly at national borders. A UK business can sell into Europe through a phone, a checkout page or a booking app, often without opening an office overseas.
That convenience is one of the great strengths of modern commerce. It also means firms can be exposed to European rules long before they think of themselves as operating across the EU.
That point has become more urgent because of two new French court rulings under the European Accessibility Act. The Act became enforceable across the EU in June 2025 and applies to a wide range of consumer-facing digital services, including e-commerce, banking, telecoms, transport ticketing, streaming and app-based platforms.
In May, the Tribunal judiciaire de Lille dismissed a case against Auchan E-Commerce on a French revenue-threshold technicality. Disability associations apiDV and Droit Pluriel have appealed, arguing that France’s exemption threshold is incompatible with the European regime. Then, on June 4, the Tribunal judiciaire de Caen ordered Carrefour to make its website and mobile app fully accessible within six months, backed by a €500 daily penalty if it misses the deadline.
The Carrefour decision is significant because the court rejected the idea that 71 per cent conformity was good enough. In effect, it said an e-commerce service cannot be only somewhat accessible; it must be accessible. That is a sharp warning to any company treating accessibility as a partial improvement, a future project or a technical footnote.
For businesses across the UK, including many in this region, this is not a remote legal story from France. Retailers, fintechs, travel operators, software firms and consumer platforms increasingly sell beyond national borders as part of normal growth. A website, checkout journey, customer account area or mobile app can create EU exposure. The issue is market access, not headquarters.
Many British firms still assume accessibility is mainly a public-sector requirement or a matter of good design practice. That view is out of date. Inaccessible digital services can stop people buying groceries, booking travel, managing money or using essential services.
They also create legal, commercial and reputational risk. Once a complaint, procurement challenge or legal letter arrives, accessibility becomes much harder and more expensive to fix.
The Carrefour order shows that courts are prepared to look beyond broad assurances of progress and ask whether people can actually use the service. The Auchan appeal, and pending cases involving E.Leclerc and Picard, could further clarify how far national exemptions go.
Whatever happens next, the direction of travel is clear: accessibility is moving from best practice to enforceable expectation.
Businesses should map whether their digital products serve EU consumers, audit websites and apps against recognised accessibility standards, prioritise the highest-risk customer journeys and build accessibility into product governance. Designers, developers, marketers, customer service teams and senior leaders all have a role to play.
At Auditsu, we help businesses assess and improve the accessibility of digital products, and we see the same pattern repeatedly. Organisations that build accessibility in early make better, more resilient services. Those that leave it until the end face rushed remediation, higher costs and uncomfortable visibility.
If an app, platform or website reaches European consumers, digital accessibility is no longer a distant regulatory theory. It is already on the agenda. The choice is whether to deal with it proactively now, or defensively – and expensively - later.
Jason Crispin is Founder & CEO of Auditsu