Research

Romania's Digital Accessibility Gap: What the Data Shows

Nine in ten Romanian company websites scanned still failed basic accessibility checks a year after EAA enforcement began. Here is what that gap means.

Published September 4, 2026

Roughly nine in ten Romanian company websites analyzed by Wawsome still failed basic accessibility checks a year after European Accessibility Act enforcement began, according to reporting on the scan by RomaniaTV. That’s the clearest data point currently available on how far actual compliance has, or hasn’t, caught up with the legal deadline in one specific EU market, and it’s a striking gap for a law that’s already in force.

The scan and what it found

Wawsome, which operates the wcag.ro accessibility information hub aimed at the Romanian market, ran a market scan of Romanian company websites checking them against basic accessibility criteria. The headline finding, that around 90% of the sites analyzed still failed, was reported by RomaniaTV as landing roughly one year after EAA enforcement took effect. A single scan of one country’s company sites isn’t a comprehensive census of every business in Romania, and it shouldn’t be read as an exact percentage that applies to every sector equally. But as a directional signal of where the market actually stands, rather than where the law says it should stand, it’s a meaningful and sourced data point.

Why the timing matters

European Accessibility Act enforcement began on June 28, 2025 for new products and services, with later transition deadlines, June 28, 2027 and June 28, 2030, covering certain existing contracts and products already in service. Romania, like every EU member state, transposed the EAA into national law and set its own enforcement and penalty structure, with maximum fines across the EU ranging roughly from 60,000 to 900,000 euros depending on the country, alongside possible product withdrawal or market bans, per Level Access’s EAA overview. A scan showing nine in ten sites still failing, taken a full year after the enforcement date, means a large share of Romanian businesses currently sit outside a law that’s already actively in force for them, not one that’s still pending.

What “failing basic checks” likely includes

Wawsome’s scan methodology beyond “basic accessibility checks” isn’t published in granular detail in available coverage, but it’s reasonable to expect the failure categories line up with what shows up in accessibility research generally. The WebAIM Million 2026 study, testing the top one million home pages worldwide, found low contrast text on 83.9% of pages and an average of 56.1 detectable errors per page, both far more common than anything exotic or unusual. There’s little reason to expect Romanian company sites differ dramatically from that global pattern; the same handful of common, fixable issues tend to repeat across markets rather than each country having a fundamentally different set of problems.

What Romanian businesses should do next

For a business that hasn’t checked where it stands, the honest read of this data is that being in the majority that hasn’t fixed basic issues yet is the current norm, not an outlier position, which removes some of the shame factor but not the actual legal exposure. The practical next step is the same regardless of company size: run a basic accessibility check against WCAG 2.1 AA and EN 301 549, since EN 301 549 v3.2.1 fully incorporates WCAG 2.1 AA and conforming to it creates a presumption of EAA compliance. Fixing what a check turns up, starting with the cheap, high frequency issues like contrast and alt text, moves a business out of the roughly 90% and into a smaller, better positioned group before enforcement attention increases.

What a Romanian business gains by acting now

A market where nine in ten sites still fail basic checks is also, from a competitive standpoint, a market where meeting the basic standard genuinely stands out. A business that fixes its contrast, alt text, and form labeling issues today isn’t just reducing legal exposure under a law that’s already active. It’s positioning itself ahead of the large majority of competitors in the same scan, at a point where accessibility is increasingly a factor customers, procurement teams, and public-sector partners screen for directly rather than treating as a nice-to-have. That’s a genuine, if underappreciated, advantage available specifically because so few businesses in the same market have claimed it yet.

The bigger EU picture

Romania is the market with sourced, specific data here, but the EAA applies across all EU member states, and there’s no strong signal that other markets are dramatically ahead of this pattern. Wide, sustained accessibility failure rates showing up consistently in global studies like the WebAIM Million suggest the gap between a law taking effect and businesses actually meeting it is a broader phenomenon, not a Romania specific one. Romania’s data is simply the clearest, most concrete illustration of it currently available.

That’s worth keeping in mind for anyone tempted to read this as a Romania-specific story rather than a broader one. The same underlying dynamic, an enforceable deadline arriving before internal remediation processes catch up, plays out anywhere a new compliance obligation lands on businesses that haven’t previously had to budget time or staff for accessibility testing. Romania simply happens to be the market where a specific, sourced number exists to describe it.

Frequently asked questions

What did the Romanian accessibility scan actually find?

Wawsome analyzed Romanian company websites and found roughly nine in ten still failed basic accessibility checks, a year after European Accessibility Act enforcement began on June 28, 2025, according to reporting on the scan by RomaniaTV.

Why does this matter now instead of before June 2025?

Because the EAA's enforcement date has already passed for new products and services. Businesses operating with a large accessibility gap after that date carry real regulatory exposure, not just a best practice recommendation, even though transition periods extend into 2027 and 2030 for some existing contracts and products.

Is Romania worse than other EU countries on accessibility?

That's difficult to say precisely without comparable scans in other markets. What can be said is that Wawsome's Romania specific data shows a wide gap between the law taking effect and websites actually meeting basic accessibility criteria, and there isn't strong reason to assume other EU markets are dramatically further ahead given similar patterns seen in wider studies like the WebAIM Million.