Accessibility statements in 2026: who needs one, what goes in it, and how to keep it true

When someone asks me to "quickly put together an accessibility statement", I ask one question: what are we going to base it on? Usually there is a pause. A statement looks like a form to fill in, so it is easy to treat it as paperwork. In fact it is a claim about the actual state of your website. If nobody has checked that state, the document describes a website that does not exist.

In the guide to WCAG for foundations the statement was one thread among many. Here it gets its own piece, because since June 2025 the questions about it have multiplied, and so have the misunderstandings. I write from Poland, where we work, so the detailed examples come from Polish law. The underlying logic is European, though, and most of it applies wherever you are in the EU. We are not a law firm, so I am not deciding your legal position. I am explaining what the rules mean for a website and the system behind it.

The first misunderstanding comes from the fact that EU accessibility law now has two layers, and they ask for different things.

Public sector websites. The Web Accessibility Directive (EU) 2016/2102 requires public sector bodies to publish an accessibility statement, and Commission Implementing Decision (EU) 2018/1523 sets out a model for it. Every member state transposed this in its own way. In Poland it is the Act of 4 April 2019 on the digital accessibility of websites and mobile applications of public bodies. It covers government offices, schools, public hospitals and cultural institutions, and also some NGOs: those working in health, for people with disabilities or for seniors. Article 10 of the Polish act says what the statement must contain, and Article 11 requires a review and update by 31 March every year, and straight away whenever the website changes in a way that may affect accessibility.

Private businesses under the European Accessibility Act. Directive (EU) 2019/882, the EAA, applies from 28 June 2025. It covers businesses that provide certain services to consumers, including e-commerce, retail banking, electronic communications and services around passenger transport. In Poland it was transposed by the Act of 26 April 2024 on ensuring compliance with accessibility requirements of certain products and services by economic operators. Here there is no "accessibility statement" in the public sector sense. What the Polish act asks for (Article 32) is an assessment of whether the service meets the accessibility requirements, and information, in the terms of service or an equivalent document and in an accessible form, on how the service meets them. Services provided by microenterprises are exempt (Article 4). Under the directive, a microenterprise means fewer than 10 people and an annual turnover or balance sheet total of no more than EUR 2 million.

The difference matters more than it seems. Some online shops, after June 2025, copy the public sector statement template: citing the public sector law, linking to the national ombudsman, and describing a request procedure the company does not actually run. A document like that does not meet the obligation that really applies to the company, and it promises customers something nobody will deliver.

The model in Decision 2018/1523 is the common EU skeleton. Poland adds its own layer: the content comes from Article 10 of the 2019 act, and the form from a Ministry of Digital Affairs document called "Technical conditions for publication and structure of the electronic accessibility statement". Version 2.0 of it has applied since 1 August 2024, and older statements had to be brought in line by 31 March 2025.

In short, a Polish public sector statement must include:

The statement must be published in HTML and be fully accessible itself, even if the rest of the site is not yet. The link to it must be reachable while navigating, which in practice means the footer of every page. The Polish technical conditions also require specific HTML ids in the code (for example a11y-status, a11y-data-przeglad, a11y-procedura), because the ministry reads statements by those ids during monitoring.

The most common and the most serious. "This website is fully compliant" appears on sites nobody has ever tried with a keyboard or a screen reader. The Polish technical conditions say plainly that the statement must match reality and be based on an actual assessment. In my view, an honest "partially compliant" with a specific list of gaps is far more useful to a visitor than full compliance on trust. Someone who uses a screen reader will find out within minutes which version is true.

A statement prepared in 2020 with no review date tells the reader one thing: nobody has looked at this since. Polish law requires a review by 31 March every year, plus an immediate update after any change that may affect accessibility. A new theme, a new booking module, a new form plugin are exactly those changes. If the website's last significant update is later than the statement's last review, something does not add up.

Anyone can demand that a public body make its website or a part of it accessible. In Poland the body has 7 days. If it cannot manage that, it must tell the requester why and give a new deadline, no later than two months from the request (Article 18). The statement must describe this procedure. Trouble starts when the email address in the statement belongs to someone who left two years ago, or goes to an inbox nobody reads. On paper there is a procedure. In practice the request disappears.

A scanned signed letter as a PDF, a statement pasted in as an image, a table without headers. The requirement is clear: HTML and fully accessible, whatever the state of the rest of the site. It is an easy fix, and it still happens.

Physical accessibility of the office and information on sign language interpretation are required sections in Poland, not decoration. They tend to vanish when the statement is moved to a new website, because "that has nothing to do with the internet".

I mentioned this above. If the EAA applies to you, you need an assessment of the service and information in your terms of service or an equivalent document. It is also worth knowing that the Polish EAA act has its own complaints route: the consumer complains to the service provider, which must reply within 30 days, or 60 days in particularly complex cases (Article 37).

In Poland, the public sector regime is supervised by the minister responsible for digital affairs, who monitors public bodies every year. The minister can fine a body up to PLN 5,000 for a missing statement or missing mandatory elements, if the gaps show up in two consecutive monitoring rounds, and up to PLN 10,000 for unjustified and persistent failure to make the website itself accessible (Article 19).

Under the Polish EAA act, e-commerce services are also supervised by the minister for digital affairs, retail banking by the Financial Ombudsman, and the whole system is coordinated by the President of PFRON, the State Fund for Rehabilitation of Disabled Persons, to whom anyone can report an inaccessible service. The authority can order the gaps to be fixed, ban the service, and for the breaches listed in the act impose a fine of up to ten times the average monthly wage, capped at 10% of the previous year's turnover (Articles 65 and 73). Other member states have their own authorities and penalties, so check the transposing law in your country.

I will say it plainly: the fine is rarely the biggest cost. The bigger one is the person who cannot submit an application, book an appointment or finish a purchase, and an organisation that never finds out, because the procedure in its statement leads nowhere.

The order matters more than the template. Testing first, the document second.

If the EAA applies to you, steps 1 to 3 are the same, because the law requires an assessment of the service. What changes is the output: instead of a statement in the public sector format, you write information in your terms of service or an equivalent document, and instead of the public sector request procedure, you describe how you handle consumer complaints.

If it turns out your statement describes the website as it was two redesigns ago, start with testing, not with editing the document. What such testing usually finds and what to fix first is covered in the guide to WCAG 2.2 for foundations. You can read more about how we approach EU regulations when building systems on our page about how we look after data and accessibility, and if you run a non-profit, have a look at the page for non-profits.

If you are not sure which regime applies to you, or you have a statement and are not sure it tells the truth, write to me and we will suggest where to start. I usually run that conversation myself, and the testing and fixes on the website are done by the team you then deal with directly. You can start with a free accessibility report for your site.