The accessibility directive does not mention your emails

by Francis Rozange | Sep 8, 2026 | Email Marketing

Abstract 3D render: a glass ramp and glass stairs rising to the same lit platform

Since June 2025 you have been told that your emails must be accessible, and that the European directive requires it.

We have read the directive. The word “email” does not appear in it once.

Which does not mean the subject does not exist. It means the question has to be put correctly.

What the directive actually covers

Directive (EU) 2019/882, known as the European Accessibility Act, has applied since 28 June 2025. That date appears in its Article 31(2), which concerns the application of national provisions, not the entry into force of the directive itself, which happened in 2019.

Its Article 2 lists the services covered. E-commerce is among them, at point (f).

But Article 3(30) defines that e-commerce restrictively:

“‘e-commerce services’ means services provided at a distance, through websites and mobile device-based applications, by electronic means and at the individual request of a consumer with a view to concluding a consumer contract”

Three elements limit the scope. The channel is a website or mobile application. The request comes from the consumer. And the purpose is to conclude a contract.

A marketing email is neither a website nor a mobile application, it is not individually requested at the moment it is sent, and it concludes no contract.

What Annex I requires, and of whom

Annex I, section III, lists the requirements applicable to all services. Two points look like things an email might have to meet:

“(v) using fonts of adequate size and suitable shape, taking into account foreseeable conditions of use, and using sufficient contrast, as well as adjustable spacing between letters, lines and paragraphs”

“(vi) providing alternative presentation of non-textual content”

Contrast, text size, alternative text. Those are exactly the criteria invoked for email.

Except that those two points concern information about how the service works, and the only point in the section that imposes the full model on a medium names two, exhaustively:

“(c) making websites, including the related online applications, and mobile device-based services, including mobile applications, accessible”

Websites and mobile applications. Not electronic mail.

As for section IV, the one specifically on e-commerce, its three requirements cover information on the accessibility of the products sold, identification, security and payment. None mentions email.

Nobody has ruled on it

There remained the possibility that an authority had settled the question by interpretation. We looked.

The European Commission guide distributed by the AccessibleEU centre contains no occurrence of the word email.

The French DGCCRF practical note, published on 13 November 2025, describes the services concerned, including e-commerce, without mentioning email or newsletters.

The enforcement review published by the DGCCRF on 25 June 2026 details its programme: rail transport, then from January 2026 e-commerce sites and mobile applications, digital accessibility audits, multimedia products, road, maritime and inland waterway transport. Email appears in none of the announced enforcement scopes.

The French DINUM page on the directive contains no occurrence of “email”, “newsletter” or “mailing”.

No official position published. That is the exact status of the question as of 8 September 2026, and we will go no further than the text.

Note in passing the exemption Article 4(5) grants to microenterprises providing services, and the transitional period in Article 32, running to 28 June 2030. Two provisions rarely quoted by those announcing an immediate obligation.

The technical reference, and its real scope

The criteria cited for email actually come from WCAG 2.2, a W3C Recommendation of 12 December 2024. Four of them transfer directly.

Text alternatives, criterion 1.1.1, level A: “All non-text content that is presented to the user has a text alternative that serves the equivalent purpose.”

Reading order, criterion 1.3.2, level A: “When the sequence in which content is presented affects its meaning, a correct reading sequence can be programmatically determined.” That is the criterion that condemns nested table layouts whose visual order does not match the code.

Contrast, criterion 1.4.3, level AA: a ratio of at least 4.5 to 1, reduced to 3 to 1 for large text, with no requirement for logos.

Target size, criterion 2.5.8, level AA, new in version 2.2: “The size of the target for pointer inputs is at least 24 by 24 CSS pixels”, with several exceptions, including the one that most often applies in email: “Inline: The target is in a sentence or its size is otherwise constrained by the line-height of non-target text.”

A necessary caveat: WCAG is a standard for web content. No provision of the document extends it explicitly to electronic mail. Applying it to an email is a defensible best practice, not an obligation arising from that text.

Why do it anyway

Not for fear of an inspection, which is announced nowhere, but because these criteria overlap almost exactly with technical constraints you already face.

Alternative text is not merely a service to a screen reader. It is the only content displayed in place of your images in Outlook, which blocks them by default.

Sufficient contrast is not merely an accessibility requirement. It is what keeps your message readable when a mail client partially inverts your colours in dark mode.

A programmatically determinable reading order is not only about screen readers. It is also what a model reads when producing a summary of your message.

Three criteria, three immediate technical benefits, and a legal obligation nobody can today demonstrate applies. This is a rare case where the good argument is not the legal one.

What to do tomorrow morning

Measure the actual contrast of your template, zone by zone. A light grey on white, chosen for elegance, almost always falls below 4.5 to 1, and becomes unreadable as soon as screen brightness drops.

Reread your alt attributes imagining they are the only visible content. For some of your recipients, that is the case, every day.

Check that the code order matches the intended reading order, by disabling styles. Many older templates place the footer before the main content in the code.

And if someone sells you a compliance project bringing your emails into line with the European directive, ask which article it rests on. The answer is instructive.

Sources

LaFactory works email on the evidence: headers, DNS records, rejection logs. No open rate promises, ever. Get in touch for a deliverability audit.