GDPR and EAA Compliance: Two laws, one compliant website

Somewhere in your company there's a checklist, and next to "privacy" there's a green tick. The banner went live months ago. Legal signed off. As far as anyone's concerned, compliance is handled. It's worth reopening that file, because the tick answers a smaller question than it looks like it does: compliant for whom?

Compliance has surprisingly little to do with the checklist, or with the fine you're trying to dodge. Underneath the legal language, both of Europe's big digital rules guard the same thing: a person's ability to move through their online life without being trapped or shut out.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) guards how their data gets handled. The European Accessibility Act (EAA) guards whether they can use the thing at all. Most companies have bought solid protection for the first and left the second standing wide open.

GDPR and EAA compliance in short

Why EAA compliance gets overlooked and why that's changing

Privacy gets the attention because the tooling is mature and the banner is right there on screen. Accessibility is the quiet half, and the picture is grim. In its February 2026 sweep of the top one million home pages, WebAIM found that 95.9% had detectable WCAG failures, averaging 56.1 errors per page, a 10.1% jump that wiped out several years of slow gains. And these aren't forgotten corners of the web; they're the most visited pages on it.

Source: WebAIM Million 2026 analysis of the top one million home pages.

The six most common WCAG failures (and why they keep appearing)

The failures are almost boringly familiar. The same six issues have led the list for seven years straight: 

1. low contrast text

2. missing alternative text

3. empty links

4. missing form labels

5. empty buttons

6. missing document language 

Low contrast alone turns up on 83.9% of pages. For someone using a screen reader, a barrier roughly every twenty-six elements stops being an occasional snag and becomes the texture of the whole experience.

The link between GDPR compliance and web accessibility

One finding should make any decision maker pause. WebAIM saw that sites built on mainstream consent technology carried far fewer accessibility errors than sites leaning on invasive tracking tools, and pointed to a likely link between how a company handles privacy and how it handles access. It suggests something uncomfortable: the companies that cut corners on one tend to cut them on the other.

What GDPR and the EAA actually protect

It helps to put the regulations down for a second and picture the person at the keyboard. GDPR is about safety: knowing who's holding your data, and being able to refuse the parts you don't want without being quietly tracked anyway. The EAA is about autonomy: being able to finish the checkout or send off a job application without needing anyone else's help.

A company can get one right and the other badly wrong. Lock the data down beautifully on a page a customer who's blind can't navigate, and you've built a vault bolted shut behind a door that won't open for them. Neither half is optional, because a person needs both to be genuinely free online.

Your Cookie Banner: where GDPR and Accessibility compliance collide

If you want to watch privacy and accessibility break in the very same moment, look at the consent banner you already installed. It belongs to both worlds at once, a privacy mechanism and an accessibility touchpoint, and it sits on every page you publish.

How one inaccessible Cookie Banner can break two laws at once

Picture someone arriving at it who navigates by keyboard, or with a screen reader. If they can't tab to "Reject all," or the button is never announced to them, they've been handed a choice they can't actually make. Now trace the consequence, because it's sharper than it first appears. GDPR says non-essential cookies can't fire before consent. When a visitor with a disability can't operate the banner, the analytics and marketing cookies that load regardless are already a breach, set off by the very tool you bought to keep you safe. The law also says refusing has to be as easy as accepting, which quietly fails the instant the toggles can't be reached by keyboard. One component, broken once, fails both laws at the same time, and it does it to the same person.

The fix depends on your consent platform

The repair doesn't happen by hand on every page. Whether a consent banner can be operated at all, its keyboard support, its focus handling, the labels a screen reader reads out, comes down to the consent platform you chose. That choice is the whole game. The privacy and consent side is iubenda's home turf, built to do that job properly. The accessibility of everything around it is ours.

Why a single tool can't make your website compliant

The temptation is to hunt for a single product that makes "compliance" disappear. There isn't one, because the two jobs aren't the same kind of work. Privacy is mostly configuration and documentation, and a serious consent platform like iubenda's takes care of it. Web accessibility keeps moving: with home pages now averaging 1,437 elements and close to 4% of them carrying errors, every release is a fresh chance to lock someone out. So it's work you keep doing, not a thing you install once and forget. We treat it that way because the web refuses to sit still.

How to start your website accessibility and compliance audit

Here's the part you can act on today. Before your next campaign goes out, spend twenty minutes on your own site, ideally on the pages that actually make money:

• Keyboard only. Try to complete a purchase or a sign-up using only the keyboard, no mouse, and notice where you get stranded.

• The reject button. Open your cookie banner and reach "Reject all" with the keyboard alone. If you can't, a share of your visitors can't either, and their consent may not count.

• Contrast. Run a contrast check on your main text and buttons, since that single issue is the most common failure on the web.

You'll find something. Most sites do. What matters is the reason you fix it. Not because a penalty is coming, though the EAA has applied to many private companies since 28 June 2025.Under the EAA, in-scope companies are also required to publish an accessibility statement — a formal, public declaration of how your website meets accessibility standards and where gaps still exist. It's not optional, and it needs to be kept up to date. Fix it because every barrier you clear is one more person who gets to finish what they came to do, without being quietly turned away at the door.

iubenda keeps the data side sound. Our job is making sure the doors open. If you want to know where your own channels really stand, start with an accessibility assessment and bring iubenda in for the privacy layer. That's the whole house, and it should be one anyone can walk into.

Frequently asked questions on GDPR and EAA compliance

What does it mean for a website to be compliant in the EU?

EU website compliance covers two duties: protecting personal data under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and making the site usable for people with disabilities under the European Accessibility Act (EAA). You need both to be compliant.

What is the difference between GDPR and the European Accessibility Act?

GDPR protects how a company collects and uses personal data, giving people control and safety. The EAA protects whether people can actually use a website, app, or service, regardless of disability. One guards privacy; the other guards access.

Can an inaccessible cookie banner break GDPR?

Yes, if a visitor with a disability can't reach the reject option using a keyboard or screen reader, they can't give valid consent. Any non-essential cookies that load anyway count as a GDPR breach, so the banner fails on privacy and accessibility at once.

How many websites fail accessibility standards?

A 2026 WebAIM analysis of the top one million home pages found that 95.9% had detectable accessibility failures, averaging 56.1 per page. The most common digital barriers were low contrast text, missing alternative text, and unlabeled form fields.

How can a business check if its website is compliant?

Start with a quick self-check: try completing a purchase using only the keyboard, confirm you can reach the reject button on your cookie banner, and test color contrast. For a full picture, an accessibility assessment maps the digital barriers across every page.