Since 28 June 2025, the European Accessibility Act (Directive (EU) 2019/882) has applied across the EU — and for the first time it places digital accessibility obligations on the ebooks most publishers sell to consumers. If you distribute EPUBs into any EU market, accessibility has moved from a nice-to-have to a condition of sale.
This guide explains, in plain terms, what the EAA asks of an EPUB, what “accessible” means technically, and how to get there without rebuilding your whole catalogue. It is practical guidance for publishing teams, not legal advice — for questions about your specific obligations, exemptions, or timelines, check the text of the Directive and your national transposition with a qualified adviser.
The European Accessibility Act and ebooks: where things stand today
The European Accessibility Act has been in force since 28 June 2025. It is not upcoming legislation and it is not a proposal: it is the law that applies right now to ebooks placed on the EU market for consumers, and to the reading software they are sold with. If you are reading this looking for a deadline to plan against, the deadline has passed — what remains are the transitional arrangements for content already on sale, which are defined at national level and which several member states extend as far as 2030.
That distinction matters for how you plan. An ebook published or re-published into an EU market today needs to be accessible on the day it goes on sale. An ebook that was already on sale before 28 June 2025 may sit inside a transitional window — narrower than most publishers assume, and not the same length in every member state. The practical read: treat every new title as in scope from day one, and treat the backlist as a remediation programme with a national deadline you need to confirm rather than a permanent exemption. That confirmation is a question for a qualified adviser; this guide is practical guidance for a publishing team, not legal advice.
What the EAA requires of ebooks
The EAA is a single EU directive that sets common accessibility requirements for a range of products and services, including e-books and the software used to read them. In practice it means that most ebooks made available to consumers in the EU on or after 28 June 2025 must be produced and sold in an accessible format, with the accessibility information disclosed to the buyer. You can read the directive itself on EUR-Lex.
The obligation is broad but not unlimited. It applies to products placed on the market from the application date, so parts of an existing backlist may fall under transitional arrangements, and some very small operators — for example microenterprises that only provide certain services — can be out of scope. These carve-outs are narrow and defined at national level, so treat them as something to confirm, not to assume.
What an accessible EPUB means in practice
The EAA describes outcomes, not file formats. The recognised way to meet it for ebooks is EPUB Accessibility 1.1, the W3C standard, which in turn builds on WCAG 2.1 level AA. Hit those two and you are aligned with what regulators, retailers and reading systems expect. You can read the standard at W3C.
Concretely, an accessible EPUB has meaningful alternative text on images that carry information, a logical heading structure, a correct reading order, the content language declared, data tables marked up as tables rather than as layout, and a working navigation document (nav). These are the elements a screen reader, a refreshable braille display or a text-to-speech engine relies on to make the book usable.
Accessibility metadata: the part stores now show
One change catches many publishers by surprise: accessibility metadata. EPUB Accessibility 1.1 expects each file to declare, in schema.org terms, how accessible it is — through properties such as accessibilityFeature, accessibilityHazard, accessMode and a human-readable accessibilitySummary.
This is no longer invisible plumbing. Major retailers and library platforms now surface this metadata on the product page, so a reader can see before buying whether a title has alt text, structured navigation or any flashing-content hazard. Missing or dishonest metadata is both a compliance gap and a lost sale.
How to check and fix an EPUB
The reference checker is Ace by DAISY, the open-source tool from the DAISY Consortium. It audits an EPUB against EPUB Accessibility and WCAG and produces a detailed report of what passes and what fails. It is the same engine the wider industry trusts, so its verdict is one retailers and aggregators recognise.
Origami runs Ace for you and then goes a step further. Mechanical problems — missing language declarations, absent or incomplete accessibility metadata, and some structural fixes — can be repaired with AI-assisted tooling in place. Anything that needs editorial judgement, above all writing alt text that actually conveys what an image means, is flagged for a human rather than guessed at. The result is fewer manual passes and a file you can stand behind.
A year on: what should already be done, and what can wait
The advice has not changed; the clock has. More than a year past the application date, new production should already be born compliant — if an EPUB you publish today still needs a remediation pass, that is the first thing to fix, because every month it stays that way adds to the backlist. After that comes what is actively on sale into the EU, starting with the titles carrying the most images and tables, where the accessibility gaps are widest and the cost to the reader is highest.
What can wait is narrower than it was. Transitional periods, the disproportionate-burden provisions and micro-operator exemptions all still exist, but they are time-limited, evidence-based, and set by each member state rather than by the Directive itself. The safe default is unchanged: assume a consumer ebook needs to be accessible, document your reasoning wherever you rely on an exception, and confirm the transitional deadline that actually applies in the markets you sell into.