June 2025 came and went, and with it arrived a piece of legislation that most event organisers either haven’t heard of or are hoping doesn’t apply to them. The European Accessibility Act is now in force across all EU member states, and the uncomfortable reality is that for the majority of professional conference and event businesses operating in — or serving attendees from — European markets, it almost certainly does.
This isn’t the kind of legislation that gives you a grace period to “work towards compliance.” It’s in force. The requirements are set. The question now isn’t whether to comply — it’s how quickly you can get there.
What Just Changed and Why It Matters to You
The EAA is a piece of EU law that requires digital services — including event platforms, conference technology, ticketing systems, and mobile applications — to meet defined accessibility standards. It applies to both EU-based organisations and to non-EU companies whose products and services reach EU users or events. If your attendees include people from EU member states and they’re accessing your event through any digital platform, you’re within scope.
Simultaneously, in the United States, ADA Title II is extending its reach. From April 2026, US public entities — including government departments, public universities, and publicly funded organisations hosting events — must provide WCAG 2.1 Level AA compliant web content and live captions for digital and hybrid events.
These two pieces of legislation are arriving in the same short window, and for any organisation running multinational events, dual compliance isn’t a stretch goal. It’s the operational baseline.
The event industry’s response to this shift has been swift. 68% of conference organisers now use real-time AI translation solutions — a figure that was below 20% three years ago. A significant part of that acceleration is compliance-driven.
What the European Accessibility Act Actually Requires
Who It Applies To
The EAA casts a wide net, and the scope is intentional. It applies to any organisation providing digital services within the EU market — including organisations based outside the EU whose services are accessible to EU users.
The notable exceptions are micro-enterprises: companies with fewer than 10 employees and annual turnover below €2 million have partial exemptions for some service categories. But for any professional event business, event technology vendor, or enterprise organisation hosting conferences with EU participation, those thresholds are almost certainly not met. If you’re running conferences of any meaningful scale, this applies to you.
NGOs, charities, and nonprofits may have different compliance timelines in certain member states, but the direction of travel is clear: language and accessibility access at events is moving from best practice to legal requirement.
What “Accessible” Means in Practice for Events
The word “accessible” in accessibility legislation is more specific than it sounds in everyday language. It doesn’t just mean “available” — it means meeting defined technical standards across a range of criteria.
For live events, the most immediately relevant requirements are around captions and language access. All live spoken content at events that are covered by the legislation needs to be accessible in real time. For deaf and hard-of-hearing attendees, that means live captions. For non-native speaking attendees, that means translation support. A single AI platform that delivers both simultaneously covers both requirements at once.
Beyond live sessions, the accessibility mandate extends to all the digital touchpoints around an event. Registration pages, agenda platforms, ticketing systems, and session streaming interfaces all need to meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA standards — which cover everything from keyboard navigation and screen reader compatibility to colour contrast and text resizing. Most event platforms, if you tested them today, would fall short of at least several of these criteria.
And when the conference ends, the obligation doesn’t end with it. Post-event content — recordings, transcripts, written summaries — must also be accessible. The EAA covers the full lifecycle of the digital content around an event, not just what happens in the room on the day.
What the Penalties Look Like
Enforcement and penalties vary by EU member state, since each country implements the EAA through its own national legislation. But the mechanisms are real: they include financial penalties, market withdrawal orders (for technology products), and the reputational consequences of enforcement action that tends to be public.
There’s also a procurement dimension that’s arguably more immediately significant for event businesses than the regulatory penalties themselves. Enterprise clients and government bodies — often the most valuable event clients — are actively adding accessibility compliance clauses to their procurement contracts. Demonstrating EAA compliance isn’t just about avoiding enforcement; it’s increasingly a requirement for winning and retaining the clients you most want.
And beyond both enforcement and procurement, there’s the litigation risk. Class action accessibility lawsuits have been rising steadily in both the US and Europe, and live event technology is increasingly in scope.
ADA Title II: What US-Based or US-Touching Events Need to Know
While the EAA is the more immediate regulatory shift for European event organisers, ADA Title II’s April 2026 deadline is rapidly approaching for organisations serving US public sector markets.
The new requirements extend ADA obligations fully into the digital space: web content and live event technology must meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA compliance, and live captions must be provided for events hosted by covered public entities. This is a significant expansion of previous ADA requirements, which were more focused on physical accessibility.
For multinational events that operate across both EU and US markets — international summits, global trade shows, cross-border corporate conferences — both sets of requirements apply simultaneously. The practical solution is the same in both cases: real-time AI captioning and translation delivered via a platform that meets the relevant standards.
The UK Dimension: Post-Brexit Accessibility Standards
The UK left the EU before the EAA was finalised, which means it isn’t directly bound by the legislation. However, the UK has its own Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations and the broader equality obligations embedded in the Equality Act 2010, both of which push in the same direction.
More practically: UK-based organisations hosting events that serve EU attendees, or that operate via platforms deployed in EU-accessible markets, may face EAA obligations regardless of where they’re incorporated. And the UK government has signalled that it’s monitoring EAA implementation closely — alignment with EU standards, if not formal adoption, is the likely trajectory.
The pragmatic response for UK event businesses is to align with EAA standards now, on the grounds that it protects you for EU events, strengthens your procurement position with EAA-compliant enterprise clients, and puts you ahead of whatever direction UK policy eventually settles on.
Live Captions vs Live Translation: Understanding the Difference (and Why You Need Both)
These two things are often used interchangeably in conversation, but they’re technically distinct — and both are increasingly required.
Live captions convert spoken content into text in the same language. A speaker presents in English; captions show the English text in real time. This serves deaf and hard-of-hearing attendees, and it’s the accessibility requirement that appears most explicitly in both EAA and ADA compliance frameworks.
Live translation converts spoken or text content into a different language. A speaker presents in English; translation delivers the content in French, Mandarin, Arabic, and any other supported language simultaneously. This serves non-native speaking attendees, and while it’s somewhat less explicitly mandated in accessibility legislation, it sits squarely within the EAA’s broader requirement that digital services be “understandable” to all users.
The good news is that both can be delivered by a single AI platform simultaneously, which means there’s no need for separate vendors, separate setups, or separate line items in your event budget. One platform, one QR code, one setup — both requirements covered.
How to Achieve Compliance Without Rebuilding Your Event Stack
The EAA doesn’t require you to throw away your existing event infrastructure. It requires you to augment it with accessible tools — and the most efficient path to compliance runs through technology rather than operational overhaul.
The starting point is an honest audit of your current event platform against WCAG 2.1 Level AA criteria. Most platforms fail at least three to five checkpoints when tested properly — common failures include insufficient colour contrast, missing keyboard navigation, non-descriptive link text, and session streaming interfaces that aren’t screen reader compatible. Identifying your specific gaps is essential before you can close them.
From there, adding real-time AI captioning to all live sessions is the single highest-impact compliance action you can take. It requires no hardware, integrates with your existing audio setup, and covers the core accessibility requirement across all sessions simultaneously.
Document your compliance approach as you go. Regulators and enterprise procurement teams will ask for evidence, and the organisations that can demonstrate a systematic, documented approach to accessibility are the ones that retain the clients and avoid the enforcement conversations.
Finally, choose your technology vendors carefully. ISO 27001 certification for data security is increasingly a minimum requirement for event technology in enterprise and government contexts — and it signals the kind of organisational rigour that accessibility compliance also demands.
Click here to download the Event Organiser’s Accessibility Compliance Checklist for 2026
Why Myjuno Is Built for the Compliance Era
Myjuno delivers real-time AI captions and voice translation simultaneously, through a single platform, with no hardware requirements. That combination addresses the two most immediately relevant EAA requirements in a single deployment — and because it runs on attendees’ own devices, there are no accessibility barriers introduced by proprietary hardware or complex installation processes.
The built-in reporting dashboard generates session-level language access data: which languages were used, how many attendees accessed translation, which sessions had the highest multilingual engagement. That data is exportable and audit-ready — providing the documentation trail that compliance frameworks and enterprise procurement processes increasingly require.
ISO 27001 certification means Myjuno sits within the security frameworks that government bodies and enterprise clients demand, removing one of the most common vendor approval bottlenecks in the procurement process.
