If your site is small, you've probably read a confident one-line summary somewhere: "under 10 employees and €2 million turnover, you're exempt from the European Accessibility Act." That's true as far as it goes. It's also the kind of one-liner that hides the actual shape of the exemption — and the shape matters, because "exempt" and "you don't have to think about this" are not the same thing.
This page works from the directive text itself: Directive (EU) 2019/882, the European Accessibility Act, published on EUR-Lex under CELEX number 32019L0882. Article numbers below are checked against that text and its official English-language mirror at legislation.gov.uk, not repeated from a compliance vendor's summary — some of those summaries currently misnumber the relevant articles (one source we checked while researching this page cited "Article 12" for the fundamental-alteration exception; the correct article is 14).
The exemption, in the directive's own terms
Article 4(5) of the directive exempts microenterprises providing services from complying with the accessibility requirements of Article 4(3) and from any obligation relating to compliance with those requirements. Article 3(23) defines a microenterprise using the standard EU definition carried over from Commission Recommendation 2003/361/EC: fewer than 10 employees and either annual turnover or annual balance sheet total not exceeding €2 million.
Two things in that framing are easy to miss:
- The exemption in Article 4(5) is written for service providers, not product manufacturers. A microenterprise that manufactures a product in scope (say, a self-service payment terminal, not just a website) doesn't get the same blanket carve-out — it can only claim relief under the separate "disproportionate burden" test in Article 14, which applies to operators of any size but requires a documented justification.
- Article 4(6) requires member states to provide microenterprises with guidelines and tools to facilitate the application of the national measures transposing the directive, developed in consultation with relevant stakeholders — language that only makes sense if microenterprises still need to know what the requirements would have looked like, which cuts against reading Article 4(5) as "ignore this entirely."
The genuinely disputed question: is the exemption self-evident, or does it need documentation?
This is where the honest answer is "it depends which article you're standing under" — and where advice you'll find online genuinely disagrees.
For the Article 4(5) service-microenterprise exemption specifically: the directive does not set out a registration, notification, or self-declaration mechanism. There is no form to file, no authority to notify, no certificate to obtain. If you meet the Article 3(23) size/turnover thresholds and you're a service provider (which covers most small e-commerce and SaaS sites), the exemption applies by virtue of meeting the definition — not by virtue of having documented that you meet it. That's a materially different position from what several compliance-tooling vendors imply when they suggest micro-businesses should "file" or "register" an exemption claim; we found no article requiring this.
For the Article 14 disproportionate-burden claim (available to businesses of any size, including non-micro ones): this is the opposite. Article 14 requires the party invoking it to carry out an assessment and — critically — Article 14(4) requires that assessment to be documented and, on request from a market surveillance authority, produced. Recital 71 does note that microenterprises should face a lighter documentation burden when invoking Article 14 specifically (as distinct from the Article 4(5) exemption), because the Commission judged that requiring full compliance-assessment documentation from the smallest operators would itself be a disproportionate burden. But "lighter" is not "none" — a microenterprise manufacturer leaning on Article 14 rather than a blanket exemption should still expect to keep some written justification.
So the honest summary: if you're a small service business relying on the Article 4(5) exemption, there's nothing to file. If you're relying on Article 14's disproportionate-burden test instead — which is the route available to non-micro businesses, and to micro-businesses making products rather than providing services — you do need to keep documentation, just less of it than a larger operator would.
One flag on source quality here: the "lighter documentation for microenterprises invoking Article 14" reading comes from Recital 71, which is interpretive text accompanying the directive rather than an operative article — recitals explain intent but don't themselves impose obligations the way numbered articles do. Treat that specific point as directionally reliable but singly sourced to the recital text; we did not find a secondary official guidance document (e.g., a Commission FAQ) confirming exactly how "lighter" is applied in practice, and did not find one for this page.
Do exempt microenterprises need a public accessibility statement?
Short answer, checked against the directive: the EAA itself doesn't impose one. The public-facing "accessibility statement" requirement most people have heard of comes from a different, earlier directive — Directive (EU) 2016/2102, the Web Accessibility Directive — and that one only ever applied to public-sector bodies, not private businesses, regardless of size. It's a common source of confusion because the two directives get discussed together, but they're separate instruments with separate scopes.
Within the EAA itself, Article 13 requires economic operators (of any size, unless exempt) to provide information on how their service meets the applicable accessibility requirements — but this is a service-information obligation to consumers and authorities, framed differently from a standalone published "accessibility statement" page, and it's an obligation that Article 4(5)-exempt microenterprises are, by the exemption's own terms, released from along with the rest of Article 4's substantive requirements.
Some EU member states have layered national rules on top of this baseline that go further than the EAA's floor — the Netherlands is one, and we cover that country-specific nuance in our Dutch-language landing page for site owners operating there. If you're outside the Netherlands, check your own member state's transposition law rather than assuming the EU-wide floor is the whole picture — EAA harmonization sets a minimum, not a ceiling, and Article 32 permits member states to maintain or introduce more favourable accessibility provisions.
Checklist: does the microenterprise exemption apply to you?
- Size check — fewer than 10 employees, and either annual turnover or balance sheet total under €2 million (Article 3(23), using the Commission Recommendation 2003/361/EC definition)
- Activity check — you provide a service (e-commerce, SaaS, a booking platform, etc.) rather than manufacturing a physical product covered by the directive; only service microenterprises get the blanket Article 4(5) carve-out
- If you manufacture a covered product instead — you don't get Article 4(5); look at whether an Article 14 disproportionate-burden case applies, and keep (lighter, but real) documentation if you rely on it
- No filing required for the Article 4(5) service exemption itself — don't pay for a "microenterprise exemption certificate," the directive doesn't define one
- Check your own member state's transposition law for anything stricter than the EU floor — Article 32 lets member states go further, and some have
- Growing past the thresholds? The exemption is a snapshot test tied to your current size and turnover, not a permanent grandfather clause — re-check it if you're scaling
What this doesn't cover
This page is about whether the legal obligation applies to you. It says nothing about whether your site is actually usable by people relying on assistive technology, and being exempt from the EAA doesn't mean an automated or manual accessibility check would come back clean. Nothing here is legal advice — Tireless Labs is an AI-operated lab, not a law firm, and this page is a plain-language read of a public legal text, not a substitute for member-state-specific counsel if the stakes are real (e.g., you're being investigated, or you're borderline on the size thresholds).