---
title: "Accessible Ebooks and the European Accessibility Act"
description: "What the EAA means for a self-published novel sold in the EU: accessibility metadata, what makes an EPUB accessible, the microenterprise exemption, and the large-print edition nobody makes."
source: https://usegalley.com/blog/accessible-ebooks-and-the-eaa
---
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# Accessible Ebooks and the European Accessibility Act

August 30, 2026 [Publishing](https://usegalley.com/blog/tag/publishing)

![An ebook listing showing accessibility metadata beside the book description](https://usegalley.com/images/blog/accessible-ebooks-and-the-eaa.png) TL;DR Since 28 June 2025 ebooks sold in the EU have to meet accessibility requirements, and retailers are now surfacing accessibility metadata on product pages. For a plain novel most of the work is already done: text is text. What is usually missing is the declaration saying so. Microenterprises get an exemption from parts of it, and there is now a formal way to declare that too. This is not legal advice.

On 28 June 2025 the
[European Accessibility Act](https://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=1202)
started applying to ebooks and e-readers sold in the EU. Most self-published
authors either have not heard of it or heard about it as a panic and stopped
reading. It is worth twenty minutes, because a novel is the easiest possible case
and the work is mostly a declaration you are not currently making.

I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. What follows is what the
directive asks for and what it means for a text-only book.

## Why a novel is the easy case

Accessibility rules are hard for cookbooks, textbooks and anything where the
layout carries meaning. A novel is a sequence of paragraphs. Almost everything
the requirements ask for, a
[properly built EPUB](https://usegalley.com/blog/epub-vs-print-pdf) already does:

- The text is real text, so a screen reader can read it and a reader can resize
it. This is the whole ballgame, and it is why a scanned or image-based ebook
fails immediately.

- The [reading order](https://usegalley.com/glossary#epub-spine) is logical, because there is only one.

- Chapter navigation exists, so a reader can move by chapter rather than by
swiping.

- Nothing flashes.

- The language is declared, so a screen reader pronounces it correctly.

- Images, if you have any, carry [alt text](https://usegalley.com/glossary#alt-text). For most novels that is the cover and
perhaps a map.

If your [EPUB](https://usegalley.com/glossary#epub) does those things, the book itself is in reasonable shape. What is
usually missing is the part that tells anyone.

## The metadata is the bit people skip

[EPUB accessibility metadata](https://usegalley.com/glossary#epub-accessibility-metadata) is a set of
declarations inside the file stating how it can be read: its access modes, the
features it has, and any hazards. It is machine readable, and retailers
increasingly surface it on the product page, which means a book with no
declaration reads as a book with no accessibility rather than a book nobody
described.

The W3C publishes a
[direct mapping from EPUB accessibility to the EAA’s requirements](https://www.w3.org/TR/epub-a11y-eaa-mapping/),
which is the document to send anyone who tells you this is vague. The
[DAISY Consortium](https://daisy.org/news-events/articles/european-directive-to-improve-the-accessibility-of-mainstream-ebooks/)
has the readable version.

Declaring it accurately costs nothing. Declaring it inaccurately is worse than
not declaring it, so the only rule that matters is that the metadata describes
the file you actually shipped.

## The microenterprise exemption

The directive exempts microenterprises, defined as fewer than ten people and
annual turnover or balance sheet total not above €2 million, in the circumstances
it sets out, and allows a disproportionate burden argument elsewhere. Most
self-published authors are comfortably inside that definition.

Two things before you relax. First, the exemption is not a blanket
one, and how it applies depends on whether you are the one selling to the reader
or your retailer is. Second, there is now a formal
[EPUB exemption property](https://www.w3.org/TR/epub-a11y-exemption/) for
declaring that a publication is claiming one, which exists precisely because
silently claiming an exemption and silently ignoring the rules look identical
from outside.

If real money depends on the answer, ask a lawyer in the relevant country. The
[EUR-Lex summary](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/summary/accessibility-of-products-and-services.html)
is the primary source.

## The large-print edition nobody makes

Accessibility for print has no directive behind it and a real market in front of
it. A [large-print edition](https://usegalley.com/glossary#large-print-edition) is a separate edition
set at 16 point or above with looser leading, and libraries buy them.

It is not the same file with the [type size](https://usegalley.com/glossary#point-size) raised. Bigger type means fewer words
per line, so every line break changes, the page count grows a lot, and
justification usually has to give way to [ragged right](https://usegalley.com/glossary#ragged-right) because there is no longer
room to distribute the space. It gets its own ISBN, because it is a distinct
edition.

Almost no self-published novel has one, which is odd, because the readers who
need it are the readers most likely to finish a book.

## What Galley does about this

The EPUB export writes the accessibility metadata rather than leaving you to hand
edit an OPF file, and the large-print PDF is a menu item rather than a project:
the same book, re-set at a readable size with the line breaks recalculated.

Neither of those makes your book compliant on its own, because compliance depends
on what you wrote and where you sell it. They remove the excuse that it was too
fiddly.

[Preview and export](https://usegalley.com/docs/preview-and-export#formats) ·
[Galley for self-publishing authors](https://usegalley.com/for/self-publishing-authors) ·
[EPUB, print PDF, or both?](https://usegalley.com/blog/epub-vs-print-pdf)

## More on publishing

- [Standard Manuscript Format, and What Agents Actually Check](https://usegalley.com/blog/standard-manuscript-format)The Shunn manuscript format specification in plain terms: font, spacing, margins, indents, scene breaks, the running header, and the word count that should be rounded.
- [Writing Software for Novelists Who Don't Write in English](https://usegalley.com/blog/write-a-novel-in-your-language)How to write and typeset a book in Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Hebrew, Hindi, Bengali, Thai, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Russian, Greek or Vietnamese, which typeface each script gets, and what still needs building.
- [Galley for Self-Publishing](https://usegalley.com/blog/galley-for-self-publishing)What self-publishing a novel in Galley involves: a print-ready interior PDF, a valid EPUB, a tuned file per store, and two checks that run before you upload to KDP.

[Every publishing post](https://usegalley.com/blog/tag/publishing)

[← All posts](https://usegalley.com/blog)

Galley is the tool that does the part this post is about — the finished, printable book.

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