European Accessibility Act in Italy: Decreto Legislativo 82/2022, who must comply, what's required

Decreto Legislativo 27 maggio 2022, n. 82 is Italy's transposition of the European Accessibility Act — Directive (EU) 2019/882 — into national law. It entered into force on 16 July 2022, and its accessibility requirements for products and services apply from 28 June 2025, the same EU-wide date as every other Member State's transposition. This guide sets out who the decree covers, how it connects to Italy's older public-sector accessibility law, and where the primary source sits.

What the decree does

Article 1 of the decree states its purpose plainly: it lays down accessibility requirements for products and services, implementing the harmonised EU rules so that a single conformant offering can circulate across the internal market. Unlike the Legge Stanca (Law 4/2004), which binds Italian public bodies, Decreto 82/2022 is the act that brings private-sector businesses into scope for the first time at national level — the same shift the EAA made across the whole EU.

Who is covered

The decree's scope tracks the categories set by the directive itself:

• Products: consumer computer hardware and operating systems, self-service terminals (payment terminals, ATMs, ticketing machines, check-in machines, interactive information kiosks), consumer terminal equipment for telecommunications and audiovisual media, and e-readers.
• Services: electronic communications services, services providing access to audiovisual media, elements of passenger transport services (air, bus, rail, waterborne), consumer banking services, e-books, and e-commerce.

E-commerce is the category with the broadest practical reach: essentially any website or app through which Italian consumers can conclude a contract at a distance.

The microenterprise exemption

Businesses providing services with fewer than 10 staff and an annual turnover or balance sheet total not exceeding EUR 2 million are exempt from the service obligations — this threshold comes from the directive itself and applies identically across the EU, Italy included. Microenterprises that manufacture or distribute covered products remain in scope, though with lighter documentation duties.

The statement obligation

Like every EAA transposition, Decreto 82/2022 requires service providers to make available information on how their service meets the applicable accessibility requirements — the Italian counterpart to what Germany implements through Anlage 3 of the BFSG. In practice this means publishing the assessment where a consumer can find it, not filing it privately with a regulator.

How Italian businesses demonstrate compliance

There is no separate Italian certificate. The practical route, as everywhere in the EU, is conformance with EN 301 549, the harmonised standard for ICT accessibility, which creates a presumption of conformity with the legal requirements. For web content this converges with WCAG 2.1 at level AA — see our EN 301 549 guide for the detail. An independent audit against that standard, plus the published statement above, is the evidence base Italian market surveillance would expect to see.

Where to find the primary source

The decree's consolidated, currently-in-force text is published on Normattiva, Italy's official legislative database — the source to cite, not a law-firm summary or vendor blog. We deliberately do not quote a specific penalty figure here: Italy sets sanctions in secondary implementing measures, applicability depends on the nature and size of the operator, and a single euro figure lifted out of that context would mislead more than it informs.

Next step

Run a free scan against the Italian rule set to see where your site's accessibility statement and technical conformance stand today, then compare it against providers who audit specifically for EN 301 549 / EAA compliance.