EN 301 549

EN 301 549 is the European standard setting out accessibility requirements for information and communication technology. It is considerably wider than a web standard: separate clauses cover hardware, software that is not a web page, non-web documents, documentation and support services, and two-way communication. For web content, the standard does not restate the criteria itself but adopts the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines directly, which is why the two documents are usually discussed in the same breath. Conformity with a harmonised standard cited in the Official Journal of the European Union confers a presumption of conformity with the corresponding legal requirements, and that mechanism is what makes this document matter to a supplier rather than only to a standards committee.

The version currently harmonised references WCAG 2.1 at level AA. That is what legally binds a product falling in scope of the European Accessibility Act today, notwithstanding that WCAG 2.2 has been a W3C Recommendation since 2023. Our own advice is still to build against 2.2 AA, because the additional criteria are few, they are genuinely useful to real users, and the standard will eventually move. What we will not do is tell a client that 2.2 is the level the law currently demands, because it is not, and the difference changes what a conformance claim can honestly say.

What it asks for beyond the web criteria

• Functional performance statements, which describe outcomes for users with particular limitations rather than techniques, and catch problems the numbered criteria happen to miss.
• Requirements covering documentation and support, so a manual nobody can read or a help channel nobody can use is a failure of the product rather than a separate customer service issue.
• Requirements for software outside the browser, which is where a desktop application, a kiosk or an embedded interface sits.
• An accessibility statement wherever the public sector directive applies, describing the conformance status, the known gaps and a route for somebody to complain about them.

Ask which version of the standard a conformance claim was tested against and on what date, because a claim with no version attached is not a claim about anything.