PortugalDecree-Law 82/2022, accessibility requirements and provider duties for services offered to consumers
In force since .
An accessibility requirements rule binding public and private bodies.
What it requires
- If you provide a service listed in Article 2(3) of Decreto-Lei 82/2022 to consumers, provide it only if it meets the accessibility requirements of the Decree-Law, which Portaria 220/2023 sets out in Annex I (Art. 4(1), Art. 13(1)); the Decree-Law has applied since (Art. 39(1)).
- If you offer e-commerce services, banking or financial services, electronic communications services, services that give access to audiovisual media services, or the websites, mobile applications, e-tickets and travel information of passenger transport, expect the supervising authority of your sector to check these services against the accessibility requirements (Art. 2(3), Art. 25(1), Art. 28(1)).
- If you provide passenger air, bus, rail or waterborne transport services, meeting the accessible-information and accessibility-information requirements of Regulations (EC) 261/2004, (EC) 1107/2006, (EC) 1371/2007, (EU) 1177/2010 and (EU) 181/2011 counts as meeting the corresponding requirements of the Decree-Law, and its additional requirements still apply (Art. 5(1) and (3)).
- Explain how your services meet the applicable accessibility requirements, in writing and orally, in a manner accessible to persons with disabilities, and keep that information for as long as the service is available (Art. 13(2)(b)); the explanation goes in the terms and conditions or an equivalent document (Annex II, point 1).
- Keep procedures that maintain the conformity of the service when its characteristics, the accessibility requirements or the harmonised standards change (Art. 13(2)(c)).
- If a service does not conform, adopt the corrective measures needed and inform the competent authorities of every Member State where you provide it, with the information on the non-conformity and the measures taken (Art. 13(2)(d)); give the supervising authority, on a reasoned request, the information and documentation it needs, in Portuguese among other languages, and cooperate with its actions (Art. 13(2)(e) and (f)).
- If you rely on the fundamental-alteration or disproportionate-burden defence, assess it yourself, document the assessment and keep the results for five years from the last time the service was supplied, and give the authority a copy on request (Art. 14(2) and (3)).
- If you rely on the disproportionate-burden defence for a service, update the assessment for each category or type of service when the service changes, when the authority asks, and at least every five years (Art. 14(6)); you cannot rely on it if you receive public or private funding, other than your own resources, made available to improve accessibility (Art. 14(7)).
- If you rely on the fundamental-alteration or disproportionate-burden defence for a specific service, inform the competent authority of the Member State where you provide it (Art. 14(8)).
- If you are a microenterprise providing services, the Decree-Law does not apply to you (Art. 2(5)(b)); Article 3 takes the definition from Directive (EU) 2019/882, Article 3(23): an enterprise which employs fewer than 10 persons and which has an annual turnover not exceeding EUR 2 million or an annual balance sheet total not exceeding EUR 2 million.
- A service provider whose facilities were lawfully in use before may keep providing the covered services with the products it lawfully used for similar services until (Art. 38(1)); self-service terminals used for services before that date may stay in use until the end of their economic useful life, for no more than 20 years after entering into service (Art. 38(4)).
These lines are LexLint's reading of the law's text.
If you get it wrong
Penalty structure
Article 29(2) of Decreto-Lei 82/2022 sets two tiers for these administrative offences. A serious offence (contraordenação grave) is fined EUR 650 to EUR 1,500 for an individual and EUR 12,000 to EUR 24,000 for a legal person. A very serious offence (contraordenação muito grave) is fined from EUR 2,000 for an individual and from EUR 24,000 for a legal person, up to the ceilings of Decreto-Lei 433/82, the general regime of administrative offences, which Article 17(1) and (2) of that regime fixes at EUR 3,740.98 for an individual and EUR 44,891.81 for a legal person (computed from the two articles). Attempt and negligence are punishable and the minimum and maximum limits are halved (Article 29(6)), so negligent conduct is fined EUR 325 to EUR 750 (individual, serious), EUR 6,000 to EUR 12,000 (legal person, serious), EUR 1,000 to EUR 1,870.49 (individual, very serious) and EUR 12,000 to EUR 22,445.91 (legal person, very serious), the last two ceilings being those Article 17(3) of the general regime states for negligence. Article 29(3) and (4) rank as very serious the placing on the market of a non-conforming product or service and the omission of the Article 14 assessment, and name the further very serious limbs by sub-item, and rank every other limb as serious. Article 29(5) takes recidivism, the number of non-conforming units and the number of persons affected into account in setting the fine. Accessory sanctions under the general regime may be added (Article 29(8)), and the conviction is always published at the offender's expense, in particular in two national newspapers (Article 29(9)). Paying the fine does not release the offender from the omitted duty where it can still be performed (Article 29(7)). The authorities named in Article 28 investigate, and Article 31(2) gives the power to impose fines and accessory sanctions to the heads or top bodies of those authorities. Fine proceeds are shared 40 percent to the State, 10 percent to the authority that records the offence, 30 percent to the authority that conducts the proceedings, 10 percent to the Instituto Nacional para a Reabilitação and 10 percent to the fund supporting persons with disabilities (Article 32). For service providers, Article 29(4)(a) and (e) rank as very serious the provision of a non-conforming service, the omission of the Article 14 assessment, and the failure to adopt corrective measures, to supply information on request or to cooperate (Article 29(1)(f)(iii) to (v)); the failure to prepare the service information or to keep conformity procedures (Article 29(1)(f)(i) and (ii)) is serious. Article 18(2) of the general regime lets the ceiling rise to the economic benefit drawn from the offence, capped at one third on top of the legal maximum (EUR 4,987.97 for a natural person and EUR 59,855.75 for a legal person as the highest ceilings, computed), and Article 19(2) caps the fine for several offences at twice the highest maximum among them. The accessory sanctions of Article 21 of the general regime include deprivation of the right to take part in public tenders and suspension of licences, for at most two years. The general regime of administrative offences provides no periodic or coercive penalty.
- Rule
- Fixed only
- As of
- Minimum
- 650
- Currency
- EUR
- Fixed cap
- 44891.81
Who enforces it
Enforcement body
ANACOM (Autoridade Nacional de Comunicações) for electronic communications services and e-commerce services, ERC (Entidade Reguladora para a Comunicação Social) for services that give access to audiovisual media services, AMT (Autoridade da Mobilidade e dos Transportes) and ANAC (Autoridade Nacional da Aviação Civil) for passenger air, bus, rail, maritime and inland waterway transport services, IMT (Instituto da Mobilidade e dos Transportes) for urban, suburban and regional transport self-service terminals, Banco de Portugal for credit contracts, payment services, services linked to payment accounts and electronic money, CMVM (Comissão do Mercado de Valores Mobiliários) for investment services, and IGAC (Inspeção-Geral das Atividades Culturais) for e-books and dedicated software (Decreto-Lei 82/2022, Article 28(1), with Declaração de Retificação 5/2023 for the Banco de Portugal sub-items).
What it reaches
Instrument type
an act of a legislature
Applicability criteria
- As of
- Combinator
- Any of
- Criteria
- a provider of a service listed in Article 2(3) of Decreto-Lei 82/2022 to consumers that is not a microenterprise (an enterprise which employs fewer than 10 persons and which has an annual turnover not exceeding EUR 2 million or an annual balance sheet total not exceeding EUR 2 million, the definition of Article 3(23) of Directive (EU) 2019/882 to which Article 3 of the Decree-Law refers)
What this law does
Decreto-Lei 82/2022, the Decree-Law on the accessibility requirements of products and services, transposes Directive (EU) 2019/882. Article 2(3) applies it to electronic communications services other than the transmission services used for machine-to-machine services, and to services that provide access to audiovisual media services.
Article 2(3) also applies it to the websites, mobile services including mobile applications, electronic tickets and ticketing services, and travel information of passenger air, bus, rail, maritime and inland waterway transport, and to the interactive self-service terminals of urban, suburban and regional transport services.
Article 2(3) further applies it to credit contracts, investment services, payment services, services linked to payment accounts, electronic money, e-books and dedicated software, and e-commerce services. Article 4(1) lets economic operators provide only services that meet the accessibility requirements of the Decree-Law, subject to Article 14 and Article 37, as Article 4(1) of the Directive provides.
Article 13(1) makes service providers responsible for ensuring that the services they design and provide meet the accessibility requirements, as Article 13 of the Directive provides.
Article 5(1) deems passenger transport services that meet the accessible-information and accessibility-information requirements of Regulations (EC) 261/2004, (EC) 1107/2006, (EC) 1371/2007, (EU) 1177/2010 and (EU) 181/2011 and of the acts adopted under Directive 2008/57/EC to meet the corresponding requirements of the Decree-Law, and Article 5(3) keeps the Decree-Law's additional requirements, as Article 5 of the Directive provides.
Article 13(2) requires providers to explain how their services meet the accessibility requirements, in writing and orally, in a manner accessible to persons with disabilities, and to keep that information while the service is available.
Article 13(2) also requires providers to keep procedures that maintain conformity with the accessibility requirements, to adopt corrective measures and inform the authorities when a service does not conform, to give the authorities documentation on request, and to cooperate with them.
Article 14(1) applies the accessibility requirements only to the extent that compliance does not require a significant change that fundamentally alters the basic nature of the product or service, or does not impose a disproportionate burden on the economic operators, joining its two limbs with 'ou' (or) where Article 14(1) of the Directive joins them with 'and'.
Article 14(2) requires every economic operator that does not intend to apply the accessibility requirements to carry out its own assessment, and Article 14(3) requires the operator to document it and keep the results for five years. Article 14(6) requires service providers that invoke the disproportionate-burden defence to update the assessment for each category or type of service when the service changes, when the authorities ask, and at least every five years.
Article 14(7) bars an operator that receives funding from sources other than its own resources, public or private, made available to improve accessibility, from invoking the disproportionate-burden defence. Article 14(8) requires an operator that invokes the defence for a specific product or service to inform the competent authority of the Member State where the product was placed on the market or the service provided.
Article 15 presumes that services that meet the harmonised standards, or parts of them, whose references are published in the Official Journal of the European Union meet the accessibility requirements, where those standards cover them. Article 2(5)(b) states that the Decree-Law does not apply to microenterprises that provide the services in Article 2(3).
Article 3 takes the definitions of the Decree-Law from Directive (EU) 2019/882, which Article 4(5) of the Directive uses to exempt microenterprises providing services. Article 2(5)(a) excludes from the Decree-Law five kinds of website and mobile application content, among them pre-recorded time-based media and office file formats published before the Decree-Law takes effect, and third-party content the operator neither funds, develops nor controls.
Article 39(1) gives the Decree-Law effect from for products placed on the market and services provided to consumers from that date. Article 38(1) lets a provider whose facilities were lawfully in use at that date go on providing the covered services with the products it lawfully used for similar services until .
Article 38(2) leaves outside the Decree-Law service contracts concluded before its entry into force, whereas Article 32(1) of the Directive speaks of service contracts agreed before . Article 38(3) caps the duration of those earlier contracts at .
Article 38(4) uses the option in Article 32(2) of the Directive to let self-service terminals used to provide services before the Decree-Law takes effect stay in use until the end of their economic useful life, for no more than 20 years after entering into service.
Article 39(2) delays to the Article 4 obligations on the answering of emergency communications to the single European emergency number 112 by the most appropriate public safety answering point, using the derogation in Article 31(3) of the Directive. Article 28(1) names ANACOM, ERC, AMT, ANAC, IMT, the Banco de Portugal, the CMVM and IGAC as the supervising authorities for the services, each for the services of its sector.
Declaração de Retificação 5/2023 corrected Article 28(1)(e) so that the Banco de Portugal supervises the credit contract, payment service, payment account and electronic money services in the sub-items i, iii, iv and v of Article 2(3)(e). Article 25(1) requires the supervising authorities to apply procedures that verify the conformity of services, including the Article 14 assessment, to handle complaints, and to verify that the operator has adopted the corrective measures.
Article 34 lets consumers, alone or with consumer or disability organisations, and those organisations on their behalf, file a complaint with those authorities for breach of the Decree-Law. Article 36 makes the Instituto Nacional para a Reabilitação responsible for monitoring the application of the regime and for forwarding to the authorities the complaints addressed to it directly.
Article 36(2)(e) has the Instituto Nacional para a Reabilitação publish on its website, from 2026 and by 31 March of each year, an annual report on the application of the Decree-Law that lists, among other things, the economic operators that did not meet the accessibility requirements. Article 29(1) makes the placing on the market of a non-conforming service and the omission of the Article 14 assessment administrative offences. Article 29(4) ranks both of those offences as very serious.
Article 29(1)(f) also makes administrative offences a service provider's failure to prepare the information and explanations on the service, to keep the procedures that maintain conformity, to adopt corrective measures, to supply information and documentation on request and to cooperate with the authorities, and Article 29(4)(e) ranks the last three of those as very serious, the other two being serious under Article 29(3).
Article 29(6) makes attempt and negligence punishable and halves the minimum and maximum limits. Article 17 of Decreto-Lei 433/82, the general regime of administrative offences, fixes the ceiling of a fine, where a law does not provide otherwise, at EUR 3,740.98 for an individual and EUR 44,891.81 for a legal person, and at EUR 1,870.49 and EUR 22,445.91 for negligence.
Article 18(2) of the general regime lets the ceiling rise to the economic benefit the offender drew from the offence, capped at one third on top of the legal maximum, which makes the highest ceilings EUR 4,987.97 for a natural person and EUR 59,855.75 for a legal person (computed), and Article 19 caps a fine for several offences at twice the highest maximum among them.
Article 21 of the general regime lists the accessory sanctions Article 29(8) of the Decree-Law lets the authority add, among them loss of objects, deprivation of the right to take part in public tenders, closure of an establishment and suspension of licences, for at most two years. Declaração de Retificação 5/2023 corrected the cross-references of Articles 9(4), 28(1)(e) and 29(1)(d) and of Annex II to the Decree-Law.
The consolidated text of the Decree-Law in the Diário da República lists Declaração de Retificação 5/2023 as the only change to it since its publication.
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