Squarespace accessibility and the EAA

Where Squarespace sites usually fail

Portfolio and gallery-style templates are the most common source of problems we see — full-bleed image blocks frequently ship with no alt text field filled in by the site owner, and scroll-triggered animations can violate WCAG's requirement that motion be pausable or avoidable for users sensitive to it. Custom CSS injected through Squarespace's code-injection panel is another frequent culprit: it's a powerful feature, but it's easy to accidentally strip a focus outline or override a color that was previously passing contrast.

Built-in structure helps, styling choices undo it

Squarespace's page-section system does produce reasonably semantic HTML by default — proper heading tags, landmark regions — which is a genuine advantage over a fully freeform page builder. The gap is almost always downstream of that: an owner picks a low-contrast accent color in the style editor, or removes a visual element they think looks "cleaner" without realizing it was carrying accessibility information (a focus ring, a visible label).

Does the EAA apply to a Squarespace site?

Yes — the same threshold applies as for every other platform on this page: EU consumer-facing, non-micro-enterprise sites need to meet the EAA's accessibility requirements regardless of which website builder they're on.

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