2. Market Reality Check
Competitor prices were checked on vendor pages or on Vendr on 30 Sept 2026. Market-size figures are loose analyst estimates and are labelled as such. Re-verify before using them externally. Sources are in 10.
2.1 Who exactly is the buyer?
"Anyone selling to EU consumers" is not a buyer. The law itself splits the market, because of the microenterprise exemption: businesses with fewer than 10 staff and ≤€2M annual turnover or balance sheet that provide services are outside the service rules (BFSG §3(3) and §2 no. 17, which mirror the Directive).
| Segment | Rough size (EU, loose estimate) | In scope? | Willingness to pay | Pain score (1–10) | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Small Shopify / WooCommerce stores (<10 staff, ≤€2M) | Hundreds of thousands | No, exempt for services | $0–29/mo, often a one-off | 3. Mostly confusion and fear from ads. | Avoid as paying customers. Legally exempt, overlay-saturated, "scan once, cancel". |
| Growing stores (10–49 staff or >€2M), no agency | Tens of thousands | Yes | $50–150/mo per site if it saves developer time | 6 | A viable second line, but each needs a call, often in the local language. |
| Web agencies maintaining 10–100 client sites (WooCommerce, Shopify, Shopware, WordPress) | Tens of thousands of agencies, a few thousand with real maintenance books | Their clients are | €99–499/mo per agency, passed on to clients | 7. Clients ask "are we compliant?", and the agency needs an answer, a report and a recurring fee. | Best buyer. One account = many sites, a billing habit, low churn. |
| Mid-size and large e-commerce (50–249+ staff) | Thousands | Yes | €5k–150k/yr | 8 | Real budget, but they buy Siteimprove, Level Access, Deque or audits through procurement. Not winnable at your size. |
| Non-EU businesses selling to EU consumers (US, UK, India) | Large, unknown | Yes, if they aren't micro | Varies | 4–5. They rarely know the law applies. | Awareness is low. Reach them through agencies, not directly. |
Assumption: the idea named two buyers (agencies or stores). The stores are the wrong half. The idea is aimed at a segment that the law mostly exempts.
Overall pain score for the idea as described: 5/10. For EU agencies whose clients are asking about the EAA: 7/10.
2.2 Is enforcement actually happening?
Yes, but through notices, complaints, courts and competitors, not fines. As of mid-2026, two vendor trackers (Level Access, 19 June 2026, and WebYes) report no confirmed fine issued under an EAA-implementing law.
| Country | What has happened since 28 June 2025 | Confidence |
|---|---|---|
| France | Disability groups (ApiDV, Droit Pluriel) sent notices to Auchan, Carrefour, E.Leclerc and Picard (July 2025), then filed urgent court actions (Nov 2025). 4 June 2026, Caen: Carrefour ordered to make carrefour.fr and its app fully accessible within 6 months, with a €500/day penalty. The court rejected Carrefour's "71% RGAA conformance" argument and called it an obligation of result. 5 May 2026, Lille: the Auchan case was dismissed. The judge applied the old €250M turnover threshold from the 2005 law (Auchan e-commerce: €144M). The groups are appealing to Douai. | High (French press, several sources) |
| Germany | A new joint regulator of the 16 states, the MLBF in Magdeburg (~70 staff), has operated since Sept 2025 and takes consumer complaints. Law firms have sent private warning letters (Abmahnungen) to online shops under competition law. Fines up to €100k (BFSG §37). | Law: high (statute). Warning letters: medium (vendor and law-firm reports). |
| Netherlands | The ACM sent information requests to e-commerce operators, including non-Dutch ones. Mandatory reporting from 15 Oct 2025, with formal enforcement expected in the second half of 2026. | Medium (vendor reports) |
| Sweden | The regulator PTS received 124 complaints (110 about services, mostly online retail) and opened its first cases. | Medium (vendor reports) |
| Rest of EU | All member states have transposed the law, but vendor trackers say about 7 lack fully working enforcement (authority, complaint route, penalties). | Medium |
Conflicting claim (don't repeat): one site reports a German fine in the "upper five figures" and Spanish fines of €50k–150k. It names the wrong German authority (BAFA instead of the MLBF) and conflicts with two other trackers. Treat it as unverified (10).
What this means for selling: the buyer's fear is a court order or a warning letter, not a fine. Your product should answer: "If a letter arrives, what can we show?"
2.3 Competitors
Enterprise platforms (not your fight)
| Tool | Price | Who buys | Why a buyer stays |
|---|---|---|---|
| Siteimprove | Custom. Vendr reports a median ~$15.6k/yr, and $15k–150k+ by size. | Large organisations, universities, public sector | Bundles accessibility, SEO, analytics and content QA. Procurement-approved. |
| Silktide | Custom. 12-month minimum contracts. | Mid-size and public sector | A strong accessibility checker and a UK/EU presence. |
| Level Access (bought UserWay, an overlay vendor, in March 2024) | Contact sales | Enterprise, US and EU | Audits, legal-grade reports, training, overlay as an upsell |
| Deque axe Monitor | Contact sales | Enterprise dev teams | The axe-core authors. "Zero false positives". |
Self-serve scanners (your real price ceiling)
| Tool | Price | Who buys | Gap you could fill |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pope Tech (WAVE engine) | Free for 25 pages. Team $25/mo (annual). Business Plus $225/mo, unlimited users and websites. | Education, small teams, agencies | US and education focus. No EU statement or evidence workflow. |
| WebYes Accessibility (CookieYes team) | Free. Pro $29/mo, Enterprise $50/mo, unlimited domains. Free statement generator. | SMBs and agencies | Very cheap. Also sells EAA fear content. You can't undercut it. |
| Equalize Digital Accessibility Checker (WordPress) | Free plugin. Pro $190/yr (1 site), $750/yr (5), Agency $2,250/yr (25 sites). Includes statement templates. | WordPress agencies | WordPress only, inside wp-admin. No cross-CMS agency dashboard or evidence file. |
| Free tools: axe DevTools, WAVE, Lighthouse, Pa11y, the W3C statement generator | $0 | Developers | No monitoring, reporting or client workflow. |
Overlays (what you position against)
| Tool | Status |
|---|---|
| accessiBe | FTC final order, April 2025: $1M, barred from claiming automated compliance without evidence. 2024 revenue ~$51.3M, a GetLatka estimate, not company-reported. |
| UserWay (Level Access), AudioEye, many Shopify apps | Still sold widely. 1,048 practitioners have signed the Overlay Fact Sheet against overlays. |
Why an agency would switch to you: a multi-client, white-label dashboard with country-specific statements and an evidence file built for EU letters and complaints, at an agency price. Why they'd stay put: Pope Tech at $225/mo and Equalize at $2,250/yr already cover "scan all my clients". Your premium has to come from the EU-specific workflow, not from the scan.
2.4 Vitamin or painkiller?
A vitamin with a painkiller moment.
- Vitamin: monthly scans and dashboards. Deferred easily, cancelled first.
- Painkiller: "Our client got a DGCCRF notice / an Abmahnung / an MLBF complaint. What do we send, and what do we fix first?" The evidence file and the prioritised fix list address that.
- Test: if the product disappeared tomorrow, what would the agency lose? For a scanner: nothing (they'd switch to Pope Tech). For the recommended version: the dated record of every scan, fix and statement for 30 clients, and the monthly care-plan fee they bill on top of it. Only the second retains.
2.5 Market size: venture-scale, lifestyle, or a feature?
Loose bottom-up estimate (analyst judgment, not verified):
- EU web agencies with a real maintenance book: roughly 10k–30k.
- Realistic spend with one new vendor: €1.2k–6k/yr.
- Agency SAM ≈ €12–180M/yr. Plus in-scope businesses buying directly, which is larger but sales-heavy.
- Capturing 0.1–1% is €0.1–1.5M ARR. That's a good small business, not a venture outcome for a solo founder.
Answer by module:
- Scanning: a feature. It's open source and priced at $25–29.
- Statement generator: a feature. It's free from W3C and WebYes, unless it's country-specific and kept live.
- Evidence and agency reporting for the EAA: a lifestyle business, with its size capped by how visible enforcement becomes.
- Audits, legal-grade reports and training at enterprise scale: venture-scale, and already owned by Level Access, Deque and Siteimprove.
2.6 Geography matters (assumption flagged)
You didn't state a location or language. It changes everything:
- Germany/Austria: biggest e-commerce market, a clear statute (BFSG), a working regulator (MLBF), and an active warning-letter culture. Buyers expect German reports, statements and support.
- Netherlands: active regulator (ACM), buyers comfortable in English, smaller market.
- France: the most visible court cases, but legal uncertainty after the Auchan ruling, and buyers expect French (and RGAA terminology).
- Selling from outside the EU: workable through agencies, but you need a local-language advisor or partner, an EU entity or clear GDPR processor terms, and EU hosting.
Pick one launch market. "All of the EU" means localised for nobody.