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The EAA disproportionate burden exemption, explained

What the EAA disproportionate burden exemption is, when it applies, and how to document the assessment under Article 14 and Annex VI.

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Pavel Charkasau

The EAA disproportionate burden exemption lets an economic operator skip a specific accessibility requirement where meeting it would fundamentally change the nature of the product or service, or place a burden that is disproportionate to the benefit. It sits in Article 14 of Directive (EU) 2019/882, and it is narrower than most people hope. It is not a way to opt out of accessibility. It applies requirement by requirement, not to your whole site, and only after you have run and written down an assessment against the criteria in Annex VI. You have to keep that assessment for five years, redo it when the service changes or at least every five years, and hand it to a market surveillance authority if asked. Two things disqualify you outright: the directive says lack of time, priority, or knowledge is never a valid reason, and if you took outside funding to improve accessibility you cannot then claim the work is too burdensome. Even where the exemption holds, you still have to make the product or service as accessible as you reasonably can. This guide walks through what the exemption covers, how the assessment works, and where businesses get it wrong.

What is the disproportionate burden exemption under the EAA?

Article 14 actually holds two separate reliefs, and it helps to keep them apart.

The first is fundamental alteration. You are not required to make a change that would alter the basic nature of what you sell. If an accessibility requirement would turn the product into something else, that requirement does not bind you for that product.

The second is disproportionate burden. This is the one people mean when they say "exemption." It lets you set aside a requirement where the cost of meeting it is out of proportion to the benefit it would bring to people with disabilities, judged against defined criteria (Article 14, Directive (EU) 2019/882).

Neither is automatic. Both require you to carry out an assessment first. And both are scoped to individual requirements, so claiming disproportionate burden on one clause of EN 301 549 says nothing about the rest of the standard, which still applies in full. The EAA does not offer a "this is hard, so we'll pass" button.

When does disproportionate burden apply?

It applies when your documented assessment shows the cost genuinely outweighs the benefit, measured against the criteria in Annex VI of the directive. Annex VI sets out what you weigh:

  • The ratio of the net cost of compliance to the overall costs of making, distributing, or importing the product, or of providing the service (operating and capital expenditure both count).
  • The estimated cost against the estimated benefit for people with disabilities, taking into account how often, and by how many people, the product or service is actually used.
  • The ratio of the net cost of compliance to the operator's net turnover (Annex VI, Directive (EU) 2019/882).

Notice what Annex VI does not contain: a number. There is no "if it costs more than X% of turnover, you're exempt" line in the law. The assessment is a reasoned weighing, not a threshold you cross. A larger company with a busy consumer service will find the benefit side heavy and the cost side light relative to turnover, so the bar to claim burden is high. A very small operator with a rarely used service may reach a different result. The criteria are the same; the arithmetic differs.

Recital 66 draws one hard line here. "Lack of priority, time or knowledge should not be considered to be legitimate reasons" for claiming disproportionate burden (Recital 66, Directive (EU) 2019/882). Being busy or short-staffed does not qualify. Only a real, quantified imbalance between cost and benefit does.

How do you document a disproportionate burden assessment?

You write it down before you rely on it. Article 14 requires the economic operator to carry out the assessment and document it, then keep the results for five years from the last time the product was placed on the market or the service was provided (Article 14, Directive (EU) 2019/882).

A workable assessment records, for each requirement you want to set aside:

  1. Which requirement you are claiming relief from, tied to the specific EN 301 549 clause or accessibility requirement.
  2. What compliance would cost in real figures, covering the work, the tooling, and any process change.
  3. The benefit forgone, meaning who is affected and how heavily the feature is used.
  4. The Annex VI ratios worked through, so the conclusion follows from the numbers rather than asserting them.

For services, the assessment is not a one-time filing. You have to redo it whenever the service is altered in a way that touches the relevant requirement, and in any case at least every five years (Article 14, Directive (EU) 2019/882). A redesign or a new checkout flow can reset the calculation, because a change that was expensive on the old system may be cheap on the new one.

If a market surveillance authority asks, you supply the assessment. An undocumented claim is not a claim at all. This is also why the exemption belongs in your record-keeping and, where relevant, is referenced in your accessibility statement rather than kept as an informal internal view.

Who can't claim disproportionate burden?

Two situations remove the option entirely.

You took external funding for accessibility. Article 14 states that operators receiving funding from sources other than their own resources, where that funding is provided to improve accessibility, cannot rely on disproportionate burden (Article 14, Directive (EU) 2019/882). If a public programme or grant paid for the work, the cost argument falls away, because the cost was not yours to bear.

The reason is priority, time, or knowledge. As Recital 66 puts it plainly, none of those count. They describe an operator who hasn't got to the work yet, not one for whom the work is genuinely disproportionate.

There is also a narrower point for small businesses. Microenterprises that deal with products are exempt from the requirement to document their disproportionate burden assessment (Article 14, Directive (EU) 2019/882). The duty to make the product accessible still stands; only the paperwork is lighter, and an authority can still ask for the reasoning. This product-side relief should not be confused with the separate microenterprise-services exemption, which is a full carve-out for service providers under 10 staff and €2 million turnover. We cover that split in who must comply with the EAA.

Does claiming the exemption mean you can ignore accessibility?

No. This is the part that gets lost. Recital 66 requires operators to make their products and services "as accessible as possible" by applying the requirements up to the point where the burden actually becomes disproportionate (Recital 66, Directive (EU) 2019/882). The exemption trims the top of the requirement, not the whole thing. If meeting a clause fully is disproportionate, you still do the affordable share of it.

So a valid disproportionate burden position looks like partial, documented conformance with a reasoned line drawn at a specific point, not a blanket "we're exempt." A business that claims the exemption and then does nothing has not used the exemption correctly; it has just skipped the law.

How do you know what compliance would actually cost?

The Annex VI assessment turns on cost versus benefit, which means you first have to know what is wrong and what fixing it involves. That takes measurement, and measurement has two layers.

Automated tools find the machine-detectable problems quickly, but only a share of the total. Deque's analysis of more than 2,000 audits found automation identified about 57% of issues by volume, while estimates based on the proportion of WCAG success criteria that can be checked automatically put the figure closer to 30% (Deque). Either way, a real portion of conformance can only be judged by a person. That matters for a burden assessment in both directions: a scanner tells you the cheap, high-volume fixes, and manual review tells you the harder cases where a cost argument might actually hold.

No scanner, and no overlay widget, makes a site conform on its own, and claiming otherwise carries its own risk. The US Federal Trade Commission's $1 million order against the overlay vendor accessiBe, for advertising that its product could make any website WCAG compliant, is the reference point (FTC). A defensible disproportionate burden file rests on honest measurement, not a tool's marketing claim. Our WCAG checklist covers the manual part so the share a scanner can't judge is still on the record.

Frequently asked questions

What is the disproportionate burden exemption under the EAA?

It is a relief in Article 14 of the European Accessibility Act that lets an economic operator set aside a specific accessibility requirement where meeting it would fundamentally alter the product or service, or impose a burden that is disproportionate to the benefit, measured against the criteria in Annex VI. It applies per requirement and must be assessed and documented first.

Is there a percentage that counts as a disproportionate burden?

No. Annex VI lists criteria, chiefly the net cost of compliance against your overall costs, against the benefit to people with disabilities, and against your net turnover, but it sets no fixed threshold. The assessment is a reasoned weighing of cost versus benefit, not a percentage you cross.

How long do you have to keep a disproportionate burden assessment?

Five years, calculated from the last time the product was placed on the market or the service was provided. For services, the assessment must also be repeated when the service is altered, and in any event at least every five years.

Can a small business always claim disproportionate burden?

No. Microenterprises that provide services have a separate full exemption, but for everyone else the burden test still has to be assessed and documented. Microenterprises dealing with products are only relieved of documenting the assessment, not of the accessibility duty itself.

Does claiming disproportionate burden mean you can ignore accessibility?

No. Recital 66 requires you to make the product or service as accessible as possible up to the point where the burden becomes disproportionate. The exemption reduces a requirement; it does not remove the obligation to do the affordable part.

See where your cost-benefit line really sits

A disproportionate burden claim is only as good as the measurement behind it. Run a free scan to surface the machine-detectable issues on your key pages, then work through the manual checklist for what a scanner can't judge. You'll have the real cost picture the Annex VI assessment needs, and an honest basis for any relief you claim rather than a guess.

Pavel Charkasau, founder, wcagc.com. Last updated 13 July 2026.

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