European Accessibility Act Readiness: One Year In, EU Websites Are No More Accessible Than the Rest of the Web
One year into European Accessibility Act enforcement, we mapped automated WCAG accessibility across ~947,000 sites in 21 EU official languages, cross-referenced against six quality dimensions in LLMSE's 3.4M-URL index. EU sites pass WCAG at 42.7% — no better than the 43.8% global web average, so the EAA has produced no measurable accessibility premium yet. A North-South divide persists: Finland leads at 53.9%, Bulgaria trails at 27.5%. EU sites also beat the web on SEO, trust and privacy, but lag on AI-answer optimization.