Customer telephone accessibility for deaf, hard-of-hearing, deafblind and aphasic people: Article L. 112-8 of the Code de la consommation and its fine

Article L112-8 of the Code de la consommation requires the enterprises that a decree designates to make the telephone number that receives a consumer's call about the performance of a contract or the handling of a complaint accessible to deaf, hard-of-hearing, deafblind and aphasic people through a simultaneous written and visual translation service, at no extra cost to end users and at the enterprise's expense.

The customer telephone reception services concerned are accessible directly or, failing that, through a dedicated online interface delivering the translation service. The enterprise either provides the accessibility directly, entrusts it under its own responsibility to a specialised operator, or provides it through the universal telephone accessibility solution of Article 105 of the Act of 7 October 2016.

Article L112-8 as it stands entered into force on 17 February 2024, under Article 64 of the Act of 21 May 2024. Ordonnance 2023-857 of 6 September 2023 replaced the inter-professional grouping that Article 105 of the Act of 7 October 2016 had provided for with a universal telephone accessibility solution, including a simultaneous written and visual translation service for deaf, hard-of-hearing, deafblind and aphasic users at no extra cost to them, which the State may entrust to an operator.

Article 3 of Décret 2017-875 fixes the threshold mentioned in Article L112-8 and the way it is calculated for each legal unit. From 1 October 2026 the service operates during the same opening hours as the customer service of the enterprise, after an earlier period in which it had to operate for a share of those hours. Article L131-7 makes any breach of Article L112-8 liable to an administrative fine, imposed under chapter II of title II of book V of the Code.

The administrative authority responsible for competition and consumer affairs may use the expertise of the services of the ministry for persons with disabilities in the investigations needed to check Article L112-8. Article 105 of the Act of 7 October 2016 provides that the translation services provide, simultaneously and at the user's request, interpreting between French and French Sign Language, written transcription and cued speech coding.

The accessibility of the customer reception services of Article L112-8 may also be achieved directly by professional telephone advisers who master French Sign Language, written transcription or cued speech. Its implementation may rely on electronic communications applications, which may take the place of the simultaneous written and visual translation service only if they guarantee accessibility of equivalent quality and offer the same translation conditions.

Article 105 required the translation service of Article L112-8 to operate during the opening hours of the customer services at the latest ten years after the promulgation of the Act of 7 October 2016. Article L521-1 lets the agents who find a breach with the powers of book V, after adversarial proceedings, enjoin the professional to comply within a reasonable period, with a daily periodic penalty of at most EUR 3,000 and a liquidated total of at most EUR 300,000.

Where the fine a breach incurs reaches EUR 75,000, as the ceilings of Article L131-7 do, the daily periodic penalty may instead be set at 0.1% at most of the worldwide turnover excluding tax of the legal person in its last closed financial year, with a liquidated total of 5% at most of that turnover.

Article 78 of the Act of 11 February 2005 puts a comparable duty on the telephone reception services of the public services, including those run by private persons charged with a public service mission, whose duty is a separate entry.