Accessibility of Products and Services Act, accessibility requirements for services, service-provider duties, microenterprise exemption and transitional rules

Section 1 provides that the Act sets the accessibility requirements for the products and services within its scope, the duties of businesses to secure accessibility, conformity assessment and the presumption of conformity, and state supervision and liability.

Section 2(3) applies the Act to the following services, or parts of them, provided to consumers: e-commerce services, electronic communications services including emergency communications but excluding machine-to-machine services, e-books and the dedicated software needed to use them, financial services, the website, mobile-device-based service, electronic ticket, electronic ticketing, transport information, real-time travel information, interactive information screen and self-service terminal parts of air, bus, rail and waterborne passenger transport services, and services that give access to an audiovisual media service.

Section 2(4) provides that a service for the purposes of the Act is a service within the meaning of Article 4(1) of Directive 2006/123/EC. Section 2(5) point 1 provides that an e-commerce service is a service provided at a distance through websites and mobile-device-based services by electronic means at a consumer's individual request in order to conclude a consumer contract.

Section 2(7) lists the financial services as payment services and the issue of e-money under the Payment Institutions and E-money Institutions Act, consumer credit and consumer credit related to residential immovable property, the basic payment services linked to a payment account under the Law of Obligations Act, and the investment services, activities and ancillary investment services listed in the Securities Market Act.

Section 2(8) applies the requirements for e-commerce services also to the e-commerce of the products and other services the Act covers.

Section 2(9) provides that the service accessibility requirements do not apply to online maps and mapping services if the essential navigation information is provided in accessible digital form, to the content of a website or mobile application of a third party that the business does not fund or develop and cannot influence, to self-service terminals integrated in a vehicle, to occasional transport within section 5 of the Public Transport Act, and to municipal, city and county lines, to which only the requirements for interactive self-service terminals apply.

Section 2(10) provides that the service accessibility requirements also do not apply to waterborne passenger transport on excursions and pleasure trips other than cruises, on original historic passenger ships designed before 1965 for up to 36 passengers and their replicas, on sailing ships, on ships for up to 12 passengers, on ships with a crew of up to three, and on any ship where the passenger journey is under 500 metres in one direction.

Section 2(11) provides that the requirements of the Act do not apply to the activity of a microenterprise service provider. Section 3(4) defines a microenterprise by its number of employees and by its annual turnover and annual balance sheet total. Section 3(2) defines a service provider as a natural or legal person who provides a service on the Union market or makes offers to provide a service to consumers in the Union.

Section 4(1) requires a service, when it is provided, to meet the accessibility requirements, subject to section 4(5) and section 5. Section 4(3) requires a service to be provided with functions, practices, policies, procedures and changes in how it operates that meet the needs of people with disabilities and give them maximum usability of the service.

Section 4(3) also requires the elements of a service to be interoperable with assistive technologies and the general terms of the service, or an equivalent document, to describe the accessibility requirements that apply to it and to give information on its design and operation. Section 11(1) requires a service provider to ensure that the service meets the applicable accessibility requirements.

Section 11(2) requires a service provider to prepare information explaining how the service meets the applicable requirements, to make it publicly available in written and oral form that is accessible, and to keep it for as long as the service is provided. Section 11(3) requires a service provider to take due account of changes in the conditions of providing the service, in the applicable requirements and in the harmonized standards or technical specifications by which conformity is determined.

Section 11(4) requires a service provider whose service does not meet the requirement to apply corrective measures and to notify TTJA without delay, with details of the non-conformity and the corrective measures. Section 11(5) requires a service provider to cooperate fully with TTJA on request when applying corrective measures. Section 22(1) applies the requirements of the Act to products placed on the market and services provided from 28 June 2025.

Section 22(2) lets a service contract concluded before 28 June 2025, whose terms do not take the applicable requirements into account, continue unchanged until it expires and at the latest until 28 June 2030. Section 22(3) lets a service provider keep using a self-service terminal that it used to provide the service before 28 June 2025 until the end of its economically useful life, and at the latest until 20 years after it was put into use.

Section 22(4) lets a service provider continue to provide a service until 28 June 2030 using a product it also used for that service before 28 June 2025. Section 22(5) provides that the service requirements do not apply to pre-recorded time-based media and office-software file formats published on a website or mobile application before 28 June 2025, or to content that is not updated or changed after that day.

Section 20 of the LPS sets the fine for providing a service that does not meet the accessibility requirements at 100 fine units at most for a natural person and EUR 20,000 at most for a legal person. Section 21 of the LPS makes TTJA the extra-judicial proceeding authority for the offences in the chapter on liability. Section 19 of the LPS sets the ceiling of the penalty payment for a precept that is not complied with at EUR 10,000. Section 47(1) of the Penal Code sets the fine unit at EUR 8.