What an accessibility statement actually needs to say (Annex V, explained)

It's not just a paragraph in your footer

A lot of "accessibility statements" in the wild are a single sentence: "We are committed to accessibility." That's not what Annex V of the EAA actually asks for.

A real EAA accessibility statement — the document your national law requires you to publish — has specific required elements. Here's what each one actually means.

The elements

1. Scope and standard. Which standard you're testing against (WCAG 2.1 AA via EN 301 549) and what it covers — your website, and increasingly your mobile apps and key digital services.

2. Compliance status. One of three honest categories: full conformance, partial conformance, or non-conformance. This has to reflect what you've actually tested or had audited — not an aspiration.

3. Non-accessible content. If you know something isn't accessible yet — a legacy PDF, a third-party embed you don't control — say so, specifically. Silence here isn't safer than disclosure; it's the thing an audit finds first.

4. Disproportionate burden disclosures (Article 14). If you're relying on the EAA's exemption for specific requirements that would be a disproportionate burden, you have to name which ones and justify why — and in some jurisdictions (the Netherlands, notably), notify the regulator within a week of completing that assessment.

5. Feedback mechanism. A real way for a user to report a problem — an email address or contact form — and ideally your target response time.

6. Enforcement escalation. Depending on your jurisdiction, who a dissatisfied user can escalate to (a national market surveillance authority).

7. Date. When it was last reviewed. Article 14 requires reassessment at least every 5 years or whenever your service changes materially — this date is what a regulator checks first.

Getting the structure right without guessing

We built a free generic template covering all seven elements, or you can generate one drafted for your specific country's law in under a minute on the homepage — free, no signup required for the first draft.