The Polish Accessibility Act: does it cover your website or shop

The Polish Accessibility Act has applied since 28 June 2025 and covers online shops, among other things. Most small companies are excluded. It is harder for larger companies that collect enquiries on their site, because official sources disagree. Here is what the act says and what it leaves open.

Check whether you are a microenterprise

The act does not apply to services provided by microenterprises (Article 4(1)). It has no definition of its own, and official guidance points to the Entrepreneurs’ Law. A microenterprise is a company that met both conditions in at least one of its last two financial years:

• it employed fewer than 10 people on average,
• its annual net turnover or balance sheet total was no more than the equivalent of EUR 2 million.

The exclusion covers services only. If you make, import or sell products named in the act, such as computers, smartphones or e-readers, your duties for those products remain.

The act sets no end date for the exclusion. Your status depends on the size of the company, though, so check it as you grow.

What counts as e-commerce

The act speaks of services “offered or provided at a distance through websites and mobile devices” at a consumer’s request, with a view to concluding a contract (Article 5(32)). In practice:

• An online shop is covered, including sales in a mobile app.
• An offer only for businesses is outside the act, which concerns services for consumers (Article 3(2)).
• A booking or order form is not mentioned separately. If a consumer concludes or starts a contract through it, we think the service is covered.

Contact forms: the sources disagree

We found no court judgment or authority decision on this, and official material does not agree:

• One PFRON answer says being able to send an enquiry is enough, because the customer can take the first step electronically.
• Another PFRON answer says sites of small guesthouses and restaurants with no online sales need not meet the requirements.
• The Accessibility Council’s recommendations limit the duty to the parts linked to the purchase process. They are not binding.

PFRON’s answers are not a legal interpretation either, as that page states. If your company is above the microenterprise thresholds and takes enquiries from consumers through its site, it is safer to assume the act applies. You can ask the Ministry of Digital Affairs, which supervises these services, about your case.

What you must do if the act covers you

1. Meet the requirements. The site and app must be perceivable, operable, understandable and robust (Article 12). This also covers security and payment (Article 18).
2. Assess conformity. This is a duty under Article 32(1). The act sets no form, but it is worth writing the assessment down.
3. Publish the information. In your terms of service or an equivalent document, describe the service, how to use it and how it meets the requirements (Article 32(2)). According to the Ministry of Funds’ handbook, a note on the site without the full document is not enough. The act does not require an accessibility statement.
4. Report gaps. If the service does not meet the requirements, tell the supervising authority without delay. The Ministry of Digital Affairs provides a template.
5. Answer complaints. You have 30 days, or at most 60 in complicated cases. With no answer in time, the complaint counts as settled as the customer asked (Article 37).

Contracts concluded before 28 June 2025 can stay unchanged until 28 June 2030 at the latest (Article 85). For new contracts, the requirements apply now.

Which standard to follow

The act names neither WCAG nor EN 301 549. It only says that conformity with a harmonised standard means the requirements are met (Article 20). The Ministry of Digital Affairs points to EN 301 549 V3.2.1, and PFRON’s guidelines build on it and on WCAG levels A and AA.

Version V4.1.1, based on WCAG 2.2, came out in September 2026. AccessibleEU said at the time that the older version remains the reference for now.

For a new site we recommend WCAG 2.2 at level AA. Content that conforms to it also conforms to earlier versions, apart from the removed criterion 4.1.1. This is our advice, not a requirement of the act.

Exceptions

Content. The act excludes third-party content you neither fund nor control, and maps if you give the address details in an accessible way (Article 4(2)). Also excluded are recordings and document files published before 28 June 2025, and archives left unchanged since that date (Article 86).

Cost and changes to the service. The requirements do not apply as far as they would mean a disproportionate burden or a fundamental change to the service (Article 21). You must assess this for each requirement separately, document it and notify the authority. You keep the documents for 5 years after the service ends and repeat the burden assessment at least every 5 years.

Supervision and penalties

E-commerce services are supervised by the minister responsible for computerisation, currently the Minister of Digital Affairs. Anyone can report a problem to PFRON. After an inspection, the authority can order a fix within up to 120 days and ban the service for up to 180 days (Article 62).

The penalty is up to ten times the average monthly wage of the previous year, and no more than 10% of turnover (Article 73). With the 2025 wage of PLN 8,903.56, the upper limit in 2026 is PLN 89,035.60. We worked out this amount ourselves from the act.

Where to start checking

We check our own site with automated tests before every release. They find only some of the problems, so go through these by hand, following WCAG 2.2:

• The whole purchase or form with the keyboard alone, with the active element clearly marked.
• A contrast of at least 4.5:1 for normal text.
• Text enlarged to 200% with no loss of content or function.
• Buttons and links of at least 24 by 24 pixels, apart from the exceptions in the standard.
• Field labels, error messages and image descriptions, also with a screen reader.

This is not legal advice. We checked the rules and guidance on 3 November 2026.