About this plugin
Since 28 June 2025 online shops that sell to consumers in the EU must meet the accessibility requirements of the European Accessibility Act (EAA). Besides fixing barriers, shops have paperwork: an accessibility statement with content prescribed by national law, in written and oral form, kept for as long as the service runs, and a duty to inform the market surveillance authority about non-conformities.
Hale Accessibility Dossier for EAA keeps that file inside WordPress. “EAA” stands for the European Accessibility Act; the plugin is an independent tool and not affiliated with the European Union or any authority. It is not an overlay and does not hide problems behind a widget.
It helps you find them, decide what to fix first, describe them honestly and prove what you did and when.
1 AA rules and is not a full RGAA audit) and Ireland.
Accessibility statement for your country
- Statement content follows the national rules: Germany (BFSG Anlage 3), Austria (BaFG Anlage 3), the Netherlands (ACM), Belgium (Boek VIII WER, Dutch or French), France (Code de la consommation, annexe à l’article D412-57), Ireland (S.I. 636/2023) and a generic EU version based on Annex V of the directive.
- Written in the language of the country: Barrierefreiheitserklärung, toegankelijkheidsverklaring, déclaration d’accessibilité or English statement. The admin interface is fully translatable, and German, Dutch and French translations are prepared for translate.wordpress.org.
- Names the correct market surveillance authority with its published contact details (MLBF, Sozialministeriumservice, ACM, FOD Economie / SPF Economie, DGCCRF, CCPC). You can override them.
- Known limitations are written for you in plain language from your open scan findings and failed manual checks, with the affected pages (checkout, cart, product page …).
- Oral format: a read-aloud button that uses the speech synthesis built into the visitor’s browser, and/or your own audio recording.
- Publishes into a normal WordPress page that you can edit with the block editor. The page stays when you remove the plugin.
- Every published version is archived with date, author and SHA-256 fingerprint.
axe-core scan of your purchase path
- Runs axe-core 4.13 in your own browser. Pages are loaded in a frame while you are logged in, so the cart, checkout and customer account are tested too. Nothing is sent to an external service.
- Detects home, shop, top category, latest product, cart, checkout, account, terms, privacy and statement pages automatically. Add your own URLs.
- Optional: puts an in-stock product into your own cart first, so the checkout is tested with content.
- Desktop (1280 px) or mobile (390 px) viewport. WCAG 2.1 A/AA rules (EN 301 549), optionally WCAG 2.2 AA and best-practice rules.
- Rule messages in German and French when your admin uses those languages.
- Flags focusable elements that show no visible change on focus, for human review.
Prioritised fix list
- Findings grouped by rule and ordered by impact and by how close the page is to the purchase. Problems in the checkout come first.
- WooCommerce and WordPress specific hints for the most common problems (contrast, missing labels, product image alt text, quantity fields, variation selectors and more).
- Each finding keeps its history: first found, fixed (automatically when a later scan no longer finds it), reopened, dismissed as false positive or exempt with a logged reason.
Notification duties and deadlines
- For the Netherlands: the ACM deadlines (critical and serious problems within 1 week, moderate and minor within 1 month unless fixed) are calculated from the date a problem was first found.
- For the other countries: shows which findings must be reported “without delay” (unverzüglich, immédiatement, immediately).
- Drafts the notification in the authority’s language from your findings and measures. You send it yourself; the plugin records when, how and the reference number.
Dated, tamper-evident evidence log
- Every scan, decision, checklist result, statement version, notification and export is logged with date, user and a SHA-256 hash that includes the previous entry. Editing or deleting entries in the database breaks the chain, and the built-in verification shows where.
- Microenterprise self-check (fewer than 10 staff and at most EUR 2 million turnover or balance sheet total) with the result recorded. Belgium does not exempt microenterprises automatically, and the check says so for Belgian shops.
- 18 manual checks for what automated tests cannot decide: keyboard-only purchase, screen reader announcements in the cart, checkout error messages, payment providers, CAPTCHA, cookie banner, zoom, emails, documents and more.
Reports
- Print or save as PDF, download as HTML, JSON or CSV.
- The report contains the summary, deadlines, fix list, manual checks, finding history, statement versions and the full evidence log, with a fingerprint of the exported data.
What Hale Accessibility Dossier for EAA does not do
- It does not make your site accessible or compliant by itself, and it is not legal advice. Automated tests find only part of all barriers; the manual checks and your fixes do the rest.
- It does not change your shop’s front end, except the read-aloud button on the statement page and an optional footer link (off by default).
- It never contacts an authority or any other service.
Privacy
Hale Accessibility Dossier for EAA makes no external HTTP requests, loads no remote scripts or fonts, sets no cookies and collects no usage data. All data stays in your WordPress database: scan results (including short HTML snippets of your own pages), the evidence log (with the user IDs of administrators who performed actions), manual check notes and statement versions. com are only opened if you click them.
Third-party code
- axe-core 4.13.0 by Deque Systems, Mozilla Public License 2.0, bundled in assets/vendor/axe-core/ with its licence and the unminified source ( axe.js ). Source: https://github.com/dequelabs/axe-core
Sources used for the statement content
- EAA, Directive (EU) 2019/882, Annex V and Art. 13: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2019/882/oj
- Germany, BFSG Anlage 3 and § 14: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bfsg/anlage_3.html
- Austria, BaFG § 14: https://www.ris.bka.gv.at/eli/bgbl/i/2023/76/P14/NOR40254374
- Netherlands, ACM: https://www.acm.nl/nl/toegankelijkheid/toegankelijkheid-van-e-handelsdiensten-en-elektronische-communicatiediensten
- Belgium, FOD Economie guidelines: https://economie.fgov.be/sites/default/files/Files/Entreprises/Guidelines-toegankelijke-e-handelsdiensten.pdf
- France, francenum: https://www.francenum.gouv.fr/guides-et-conseils/developpement-commercial/site-e-commerce/accessibilite-des-sites-de-e-commerce
- Ireland, S.I. 636/2023: https://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/2023/si/636/