The European Accessibility Act's e-book requirements took effect on June 28, 2025, applying to new e-books sold in the EU. The practical fix for most indie authors is smaller than the legal framing suggests: EPUB Accessibility 1.1 metadata and a handful of structural checks, validated with free tools. The European Commission's guidance pages set out the scope, including an exemption for micro-enterprises serving fewer than ten people — which most self-publishers technically are, though retailers may demand compliance anyway.
MonBook Pro publishes information, not legal advice; the act's application to any specific business is a question for a lawyer qualified in EU member-state law.
What changed on June 28, 2025?
E-books placed on the EU market must satisfy accessibility requirements in line with the act's annex: text that adapts to font size and screen, reading order that assistive technology can follow, and accessible navigation. For EPUB, the industry answer is the EPUB Accessibility 1.1 standard, published by the W3C's publishing group in 2023 — the same standard libraries have increasingly asked for. The overlooked detail in the Commission's guidance: accessibility statements are part of the obligation, so a compliant file without a statement is still non-compliant.
Does this apply to self-publishers?
Mostly through platforms rather than direct enforcement. The act's micro-enterprise exemption shields the smallest sellers in principle, but the retailers and distributors who actually place books on the market — Amazon KDP, Kobo Writing Life, and their peers — have been updating intake requirements since 2024, per their own announcements, because their exposure is larger than any single author's. An indie author who publishes through platforms will meet the rules at the upload form, not in court.
What should you actually do?
Three steps cover the documented requirements: validate your EPUB with EPUBCheck 5.x; add the accessibility metadata fields — summary, access modes, and features — following the DAISY Consortium's Inclusive Publishing checklist; and confirm your writing tool's current version exports alt text and logical reading order. None of this costs money; all of it costs an afternoon per title.
What the evidence establishes is a metadata-and-structure deadline with a soft edge for the smallest publishers, enforced mostly by platforms. What remains unknown is how strictly member-state market-surveillance authorities will pursue e-books after the transition, and no source in this coverage claims to know.