Who has to comply
Public-sector since 2018; consumer services from 28 June 2025.
Portugal is a mid-sized western-European market with a strong tourism and cross-border online-retail flow, so many foreign stores sell into it in euros. Under DL 83/2018 as extended by the EAA transposition, a non-EU seller reaching Portuguese consumers is covered on the country-of-consumption basis. A Portuguese-language accessibility statement is expected, and cross-border sellers commonly rely on Portugal's public AccessMonitor tool to self-check, which the regulator itself uses as a reference point.
What the law actually requires
DL 83/2018 + EAA sets the technical bar at WCAG 2.1 Level AA via EN 301 549. On top of it, Decreto-Lei n.º 83/2018 lists these operational duties:
- EN 301 549 / WCAG 2.1 AA
- Portuguese-language accessibility statement
Penalties and how enforcement actually works
Administrative fines per DL 83/2018; EAA-specific penalties added by transposition.
Enforcement is centralised in AMA (Agência para a Modernização Administrativa), which runs the well-known AccessMonitor automated evaluation service and administers the public-sector regime. Portugal's approach is tool-assisted and monitoring-oriented: AMA's AccessMonitor gives both regulators and operators a common automated baseline, so obvious machine-detectable failures are easy for the agency to surface. Administrative fines under DL 83/2018 plus EAA-specific penalties back the regime, and the presence of a public scoring tool means low-hanging violations are unusually visible.
Reading the DL 83/2018 + EAA at the source
The law is cited as Decreto-Lei n.º 83/2018 + Lei de Acessibilidade (Decreto-Lei n.º 83/2018). Enforcement: AMA (Agência para a Modernização Administrativa). Key date: 28 June 2025. For the exact wording, read the official reference for Portugal listed under Sources below.
Sources
- AccessMonitor (AMA)
- European Accessibility Act (Directive (EU) 2019/882) · European Commission
Links checked 12 October 2026. Not legal advice. Methodology · About Certvo