Last verified: 2 August 2026. This page cites a date claim that several sources repeat but that we could not confirm officially — dates like this are worth re-checking periodically rather than treating as settled, so we'll revisit this page as new information surfaces.
If you've searched for European Accessibility Act deadlines specific to France, you've likely landed on at least one vendor or agency blog stating that 23 September 2026 is a key compliance date. We went looking for the official source behind that date before repeating it here, in line with our own rule that a citation only counts if we actually found and read the primary document. We didn't find one. Here's the honest state of things.
What we searched for, and what we found
We checked Légifrance for the ordonnance and décret that transpose the EAA into French law, and the French government's own accessibility pages, specifically looking for any mention of 23 September 2026 tied to the EAA's private-sector obligations. We did not find one. The French Ministry for Persons with Disabilities' own page on the subject — handicap.gouv.fr, "28 juin 2025 : une avancée décisive pour l'accessibilité des produits et des services en Europe" — states only the EU-wide dates below and does not mention any date in September 2026 anywhere.
Several accessibility-vendor and agency blogs do repeat the 23 September 2026 date in relation to the EAA. We're not linking to them here as authorities on the date, precisely because none of them cite an official source for it either — repeating a claim across multiple blogs doesn't make it primary-sourced, it just makes it widely repeated. If you've seen this date on a vendor site, ask that vendor what French or EU legal text they're citing; if you find one, we'd genuinely like to correct this page.
What we can confirm, from official sources
The EU-wide EAA dates, confirmed directly against the directive text on EUR-Lex (Directive (EU) 2019/882, Article 31) and echoed on the French government page above:
- 28 June 2025 — the date member states' transposing measures became applicable EU-wide (the directive itself was adopted in 2019; this is when the national obligations under it took effect). This is the date the French ministry page centers, not any date in September.
- 28 June 2030 — a transitional cutoff: service contracts agreed before 28 June 2025 may continue without alteration until they expire, but no longer than five years from that date — i.e. 28 June 2030 (Article 32(1), second subparagraph). Self-service terminals lawfully in use before 28 June 2025 may also remain in use for the provision of similar services until the end of their economically useful life, but no longer than 20 years after their entry into use (Article 32(2)).
France's own transposition instruments, per Légifrance's legislative dossier:
- Ordonnance n° 2023-859 of 6 September 2023 — the primary transposition instrument, made under authority granted by Article 16 of Law n° 2023-171 of 9 March 2023. It amended the Code de la consommation to build in the EAA's product/service accessibility requirements, and separately strengthened sanctions for public-sector web accessibility failures under Article 47-1 of the 2005 disability-rights law (that sanctions provision took effect 1 January 2024, distinct from the private-sector EAA obligations).
- Décret n° 2023-931 and the arrêté of 9 October 2023 — the implementing texts that fill in operational detail and, per our search results, set penalties for non-conformity (up to a 5th-class contravention for individuals, higher amounts for legal entities and, per multiple secondary sources, up to €50,000 per non-conforming service for repeat or serious cases — we have not independently verified that specific figure against the décret text itself, so treat it as reported rather than confirmed here).
None of the official texts we reviewed — the ordonnance, the décret, the arrêté dossier, or the ministry's own explainer page — surfaced a 23 September 2026 date.
Our best guess at where the date confusion comes from
There's a real, well-documented 23 September date in French/EU digital accessibility law — it's just for a different directive, an earlier one, covering only the public sector. Directive (EU) 2016/2102, the Web Accessibility Directive (not the EAA), set these staggered deadlines for public-sector websites and apps:
- 23 September 2018 — transposition deadline for member states
- 23 September 2019 — new public-sector websites had to comply
- 23 September 2020 — existing public-sector websites had to comply
- 23 September 2021 — public-sector mobile apps had to comply
That 2020 date in particular is genuinely, officially, repeatedly documented — and it is easy to see how "23 September" plus "accessibility deadline" plus a France-specific search could get mixed up with the EAA's private-sector timeline, especially since both directives get discussed on the same compliance-vendor sites, sometimes in the same paragraph. If your site is a private commercial e-commerce or SaaS site (which is what most readers of this page run), the directive that actually governs you is the EAA, with the 28 June 2025 / 2030 dates above — not the 2016 Web Accessibility Directive's September dates, which only ever bound public bodies.
What to actually do about your deadline
If you're a private-sector operator in scope for the EAA, the operative date has already passed: 28 June 2025. There isn't a later 2026 grace period sitting in front of you unless you're specifically covered by the Article 32 transitional provisions above (a pre-existing service contract, or certain already-deployed self-service terminals). Waiting for a September 2026 date that we couldn't confirm exists would mean treating an already-active obligation as still pending.