Accessibility requirements apply to digital commerce
The Digital Services Act came into force in Finland in 2019, and it is based on the European Accessibility Act. Originally the Digital Services Act only required public administration services to be accessible to all users.
Changes made to the European Accessibility Act in 2023 also affected the Finnish Digital Services Act. The changes meant that new services and operators (including digital commerce) became subject to accessibility requirements. The purpose is to continuously promote equality for people in our digital society.
In practice, this means that online retailers will have to comply with the accessibility requirements of the Digital Services Act from June 28, 2025 onward.
Why invest in the accessibility of digital commerce?
In total, there are around 87 million people in Europe with some degree of life-limiting impairment. About one million of them live in Finland. Such impairments may include limitations in hearing, vision, mobility, speech or learning. For them, using digital commerce is a challenge or even impossible if no attention has been paid to the accessibility of the site. Investing in accessibility also makes it easier for older people to use digital commerce as effortlessly as possible.
In fact, investing in usability and accessibility benefits all users of digital commerce. In an easy-to-use digital commerce, improving the shopping experience has a direct impact on sales and conversions. You can read more about the benefits of accessible online services here.
What should online retailers do to ensure that their digital commerce solution complies with the requirements of the Digital Services Act?
In practice, the EU’s revised Digital Services Act means that digital commerce must meet at least WCAG 2.1* AA standards, and be accessible to all users from 28 June 2025. Some online merchants have taken steps well in advance, but many are waking up to the issue as the deadline approaches.
Many digital businesses have a lot of work to do to meet accessibility standards. Observations requiring action can be found, for example, in the store’s own code base, third-party modules, images produced by marketing, and content pages produced by content creators.
Online retailers often do not have the resources to review and correct all of the site’s page views, as there can be dozens of them in even the smallest stores, and hundreds in larger ones. It often makes more sense to focus on the views that are most important to using digital commerce and making purchases.
* The WCAG 2.2 standards have been published but are not yet mandatory. The 2.2 standards are complementary to the 2.1 standards, and it makes sense to use the 2.2 standards as a baseline for measuring the accessibility of digital commerce.
Get started easily with Pinja’s accessibility audits
To assess the initial situation of digital commerce accessibility, it is worth considering a digital commerce-specific audit. The audit identifies all details that undermine digital commerce accessibility in the selected views and provides clear solutions.
Pinja offers a simple and effortless Accessibility audit for selected pages of your digital commerce site. The audit is performed by our certified accessibility experts.
The result of the audit is a clear report with observations and suggested corrections. The report is not just a technical and difficult-to-read list of deficiencies, but an easy-to-understand document with illustrative images and examples for each view. Our client can then decide whether to implement the corrections with Pinja or with another operator.
Want to fix your digital commerce accessibility? Contact us, and we’ll see together what kind of audit your digital commerce solution needs!
A guide to improving accessibility in digital commerce
As an online merchant, you can also improve accessibility in areas that you can control. We have compiled a short list of common factors that affect accessibility. Read a summary in our guide: Accessibility Directive and Digital Services Act – consider these 12 things for digital commerce accessibility.
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