EAA 2026 for Banks and Financial Services: Making PDFs Accessible
EAA enforcement started June 28, 2026. If your institution distributes PDFs digitally — account statements, KIDs, T&Cs, product sheets — you are now operating under a WCAG 2.2 AA obligation.
Who is affected
The EAA covers any product or service that includes a digital component and is offered to consumers in the EU. In financial services, this means:
- Retail banks: account statements, fee schedules, terms and conditions, mortgage documentation
- Investment firms and asset managers: KIDs, KIIDs, prospectuses, fund fact sheets
- Insurance companies: policy documents, PIDs under IDD
- Fintech and neobanks: all digital-native documentation including in-app PDFs
- Payment service providers: payment account information documents (PAD Directive)
The EAA accessibility requirements
WCAG 2.2 Level AA includes 50+ success criteria. For financial services PDFs, the hardest to satisfy are:
WCAG 1.3.1 — Info and Relationships: Structure must be programmatically determinable. Scanned PDFs and poorly-tagged PDFs fail this completely.
WCAG 1.4.3 — Contrast (Minimum): Body text must achieve 4.5:1 contrast ratio. Many financial templates use grey text — a common failure.
WCAG 1.4.10 — Reflow: Content must be readable at 320px viewport width without horizontal scrolling. This is Level AA and mandatory under EAA.
WCAG 1.4.10 is the requirement that creates the most difficulty. It cannot be solved by tagging alone.
Why PDF cannot satisfy WCAG 1.4.10
PDF is a fixed-layout format. A KID formatted for A4 paper cannot reflow to a 320px screen. This is a format problem, not a tagging problem.
No amount of PDF accessibility remediation — including full PDF/UA-1 compliance — produces a document that satisfies WCAG 1.4.10.
The only formats that satisfy WCAG 1.4.10 by design are HTML and EPUB3 (which is HTML5-based).
Compliance options
Option 1: Remediate to PDF/UA — expensive, still cannot satisfy WCAG 1.4.10.
Option 2: Publish HTML alternative — satisfies requirements but significant dev effort to maintain parity at scale.
Option 3: Convert to EPUB3 — EPUB3 is reflowable by design, satisfies WCAG 2.2 AA including 1.4.10. toolkit.bot automates this. Input existing PDFs, receive accessible EPUB3 validated by ACE by DAISY.
Guidance by document type
KIDs/KIIDs (PRIIPS/UCITS): 2–3 page structured documents. Ideal for automated PDF to EPUB3 conversion at scale. Fund managers with 200+ share classes can automate via API.
Account statements: Generated programmatically from core banking systems. Best fix is generating EPUB3 directly. toolkit.bot API supports this workflow.
T&Cs / product information sheets: Relatively static. Convert once per version update. Free tier (5 conversions/month) handles most institutions.
Practical steps
Immediate:
- Audit your customer-facing PDF document inventory
- Run a sample through PAC 2024 (free) to understand current failure count
- Test conversion at toolkit.bot/pdf2epub (free, no account required)
30 days:
- Convert highest-traffic documents first (KIDs, account statements, product sheets)
- Validate output with ACE by DAISY:
npm install -g @daisy/ace && ace your-file.epub -o report - Publish EPUB3 alongside PDFs as the accessible alternative
At scale (API tier): toolkit.bot API at EUR 29/month for bulk/automated workflows with webhook support. See pricing.
Compliance comparison
| Requirement | PDF/UA remediation | HTML | EPUB3 conversion |
|---|---|---|---|
| WCAG 1.3.1 (Structure) | ✓ (with effort) | ✓ | ✓ |
| WCAG 1.4.3 (Contrast) | Partial | ✓ | ✓ |
| WCAG 1.4.10 (Reflow) | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Cost for 100 docs | High (manual) | Very high (dev) | Low (automated) |
| Ongoing maintenance | High | High | Low |
Try free: toolkit.bot/pdf2epub — 5 conversions/month, no account required.
Try free → API plan: EUR 29/month