The Digital Accessibility Deadline Calendar: Every Date That Matters, 2026 to 2030
Last updated: July 2026. We keep this page current as dates move. In spring 2026, both the Department of Justice (April 20) and the Department of Health and Human Services (May 7) extended their web accessibility compliance deadlines by one year.
If you're responsible for a website, the accessibility landscape has quietly filled up with real, dated legal obligations. The trouble is that the dates are governed by different laws on different continents; some have moved, and most write-ups cover only one regime at a time. So here's the whole calendar in one place: what's already in force, what's coming, who each date applies to, and what standard it points to. As ever, we're a monitoring company rather than a law firm, so treat this as a well-researched map, not legal advice.
One idea before the dates, because it makes sense of all of them: almost every law here points to the same technical foundation, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). The laws differ in scope and penalties; the actual work, building a site that meets specific accessibility criteria, is largely the same everywhere.
The current legal baseline across the US, UK, and EU is WCAG 2.1 Level AA. However, we recommend building to WCAG 2.2 Level AA instead. WCAG 2.2 includes all of WCAG 2.1 plus additional success criteria, which means: (1) you'll exceed current legal requirements, (2) when EN 301 549 updates to reference WCAG 2.2 (expected late 2026), you'll already comply, and (3) you'll be positioned for future regulatory changes. Start with WCAG 2.2 Level AA, and you're covered across every regime on this page.
The calendar at a glance
Already in force: the EAA, and it has teeth
The European Accessibility Act became enforceable on 28 June 2025 for services provided to EU consumers after that date, including e-commerce, banking, transport booking and e-books. Two things people still get wrong about it: it applies to businesses based anywhere, including the UK and US, if they sell to EU customers; and there is no meaningful grace period for standard online services. The only exemption for services is for microenterprises, defined as both fewer than ten employees and less than €2 million annual turnover.
Anyone treating this as a paper obligation should read the enforcement record. On 4 June 2026, a French court ordered Carrefour to achieve full accessibility, rejecting its 71 per cent compliance score as insufficient and setting a six-month deadline on pain of daily fines. The ruling signalled that partial compliance is not a legal position under the EAA, and enforcement is complaint-driven, so any customer can start the clock. Regulators in Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands and Italy have moved from setting up complaint channels to active reviews.
Already in force: the UK and US baselines
The UK isn't covered by the EAA (though UK businesses selling into the EU are). At home, the Equality Act 2010 has required accessible services all along, with no deadline because it's always been live, and the public sector has had its own regulations, pointing at WCAG 2.1 Level AA via EN 301 549, since 2018. There's no UK equivalent of the EAA yet, but a UK business that ignores accessibility is exposed on both fronts: domestically under the Equality Act, and in Europe the moment it sells across the Channel.
In the US, the Americans with Disabilities Act has applied to businesses open to the public (Title III) for decades, and courts have applied it to websites case by case. There's still no formal technical standard for private businesses, and there doesn't need to be one for lawsuits to keep coming: thousands of website accessibility cases are filed every year, and settlements consistently point to WCAG 2.1 Level AA as the benchmark. No deadline here either, because the exposure already exists.
Expected late 2026: the updated European standard
The EU's harmonised technical standard, EN 301 549, currently references WCAG 2.1. Version 4.1.1, incorporating WCAG 2.2, is expected to land late in 2026 or early 2027. Practical advice: don't wait for it, and don't build to the older version. WCAG 2.2 includes everything in 2.1, so building to 2.2 AA today means the standards update arrives as a non-event for you.
26 April 2027 and 26 April 2028: the ADA Title II deadlines
In 2024, the US Department of Justice finalised the first rule to write a specific technical standard, WCAG 2.1 Level AA, into the ADA, covering state and local government websites and apps: councils, public universities, courts, transit agencies. On 20 April 2026, the DOJ extended the compliance dates by one year, so they now stand at 26 April 2027 for entities serving populations of 50,000 or more, and 26 April 2028 for smaller entities and special districts.
Two cautions for anyone relaxing into that extra year. The DOJ has said it fully intends to implement the rule at the new deadlines, and the ADA's underlying obligations never paused, so lawsuits continue through the extension. In our view, the extension is time to finish properly, not time to start later.
11 May 2027 and 10 May 2028: the US healthcare deadlines
Less widely known but very concrete: the US Department of Health and Human Services finalised its own web and mobile accessibility rule under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, covering organisations that receive HHS funding (hospitals, health centres, Medicaid providers, and other healthcare organisations). The standard is WCAG 2.1 Level AA. On 7 May 2026, HHS extended compliance deadlines by one year: recipients with 15 or more employees must comply by 11 May 2027, and smaller recipients (fewer than 15 employees) by 10 May 2028. If you're in health tech or serve healthcare clients, these dates may matter to you more than the ADA ones.
28 June 2027: the EAA's emergency services provision
A narrower one for completeness: the EAA requires that answering of 112 emergency communications meets accessibility requirements from 28 June 2027. It applies to public emergency services rather than commercial websites, but it's part of the same directive and belongs on the calendar.
28 June 2030: the end of the EAA's legacy runway but not what most people think
The EAA's transition provisions are widely misread as a general grace period. They aren't, and this is critical: if you have a website or app that launched after 28 June 2025, it is already in scope with no exceptions. What actually runs to 28 June 2030 is narrower: service providers may keep using products they were lawfully using before June 2025 to deliver their services, and service contracts signed before June 2025 may run unchanged until they expire, capped at five years. (Self-service terminals like ATMs and kiosks get longer, until the end of their economic life, capped at twenty years.)
None of this shelters an ordinary website or app, which has been in scope since 2025. If anyone in your organisation is citing "the 2030 deadline" as a reason to wait, that's the misreading to correct, and it's expensive to correct late. The French court's Carrefour ruling is the warning: partial compliance after the deadline is not a defensible legal position.
On the horizon, no date yet: WCAG 3.0
The next generation of the guidelines, WCAG 3.0, is in development and will eventually change how conformance is measured. It's years away; the working group expects no earlier release than 2028, with finalisation likely in 2028–2029. Track it with mild interest; build to WCAG 2.2 AA today.
What to do with all this
Strip out the jurisdictions and the calendar says one thing: between 2025 and 2028, digital accessibility moved from principle to dated legal obligation across the EU, the UK and the US, and the enforcement era has already started. The dates differ; the work doesn't. Audit your whole site against WCAG 2.2 AA, fix criterion by criterion starting with your critical journeys, publish an accessibility statement with a working feedback channel, and monitor continuously so regressions don't quietly undo the work between audits.
That last part is the job SiteBeacon does: accessibility checked across every page, alongside performance and carbon, on an ongoing basis rather than as a yearly scramble. If a date on this page applies to you and you don't yet know where your site stands, try SiteBeacon Demo for free or talk to us. Bookmark this page either way; we'll keep the calendar current as the dates move, and if the past year is any guide, they will.