Portugal · guia de conformidade EAA

EAA in Portugal — Decreto-Lei 82/2022

Portugal transposed the European Accessibility Act through Decreto-Lei n.º 82/2022, de 6 de dezembro, followed by complementary Decreto-Lei n.º 103/2024 for private-sector operators, effective 28 de junho de 2025. The lead coordinating authority is the Agência para a Modernização Administrativa (AMA), which also runs the public-sector accessibility oversight under Decreto-Lei n.º 83/2018. Market surveillance for consumer services is handled by ASAE (Autoridade de Segurança Alimentar e Económica), with Banco de Portugal and ANACOM covering banking and electronic communications respectively. Penalties include contraordenações económicas of up to €44,891.81 per breach — the Portuguese statutory ceiling for contraordenação muito grave.

Enquadramento legal

  • Decreto-Lei n.º 83/2018 — transposition of Directive 2016/2102 for public-sector bodies. AMA runs oversight via acessibilidade.gov.pt.
  • Decreto-Lei n.º 82/2022 — base transposition of EAA for products.
  • Decreto-Lei n.º 103/2024 — complementary regulation extending the framework to private-sector services, effective 28 June 2025.
  • EN 301 549 v3.2.1 — harmonised standard, embeds WCAG 2.1 Level AA.
  • Regime Geral das Contraordenações Económicas (RGCE) — sets the statutory ceilings AMA/ASAE apply.

Who it applies to

In-scope services for consumers in Portugal:

  • E-commerce, marketplaces, booking platforms.
  • Consumer-facing banking, payment services, and financial products.
  • E-books, e-readers, and associated software.
  • Consumer-facing electronic communications (messaging, VoIP, 112).
  • CP, Carris, Metro passenger-transport ticketing and real-time info.
  • Consumer hardware terminals (Multibanco ATMs, check-in machines) and their operating systems.

Microenterprise exemption per Article 4(5) EAA as transposed: fewer than 10 employees and annual turnover / balance sheet under €2M, providing services. Product manufacturers are not exempt regardless of size.

Non-Portuguese operators serving Portuguese consumers fall within AMA / ASAE reach. Brazilian-market operators using the pt_BR locale should note that Portuguese (pt_PT) compliance requires Portuguese-Portuguese conventions in the declaração (não the Brazilian variants).

Technical requirements — EN 301 549

EN 301 549 v3.2.1 is the referenced harmonised standard. For web content, WCAG 2.1 Level AA is the conformance target. Key expectations:

  • Perceivable — alt text, captions for prerecorded video, 4.5:1 body contrast, 3:1 large text.
  • Operable — full keyboard navigability, no flashing above 3 Hz, visible focus indicator.
  • Understandable — <html lang="pt-PT">, predictable navigation, explicit form labels in Portuguese (NIF validation, postal-code NNNN-NNN format, Portuguese name-order conventions).
  • Robust — valid HTML, ARIA consistent with DOM semantics.

AMA's public-sector tooling (AccessMonitor) is freely available and useful as a secondary check alongside axe-core. It evaluates slightly different checkpoints, surfaced as a complementary signal.

Contraordenações — penalty structure

Portuguese penalties under the RGCE framework have four tiers (leve / grave / muito grave):

  • Contraordenação leve: fines from €250 to €3,740.98.
  • Contraordenação grave: fines from €650 to €44,891.81.
  • Contraordenação muito grave: fines up to €44,891.81 for natural persons, up to €44,891.81 × 3 for collective persons in aggravated cases.
  • Ancillary sanctions: temporary prohibition of activity, suspension of authorisations, publication of the sanction decision.
  • Sector regulators (Banco de Portugal, ANACOM) apply their own — generally higher — sanction ceilings in their respective domains.

ASAE enforcement typically proceeds via inspection → notice → fine. A published declaração with a named contact usually stops escalation at the notice stage, provided an observable remediation plan exists.

Declaração de acessibilidade

Required elements:

  1. Conformance status: totalmente conforme / parcialmente conforme / não conforme with EN 301 549.
  2. List of non-accessible content with justification (encargo desproporcionado, exemption, pending remediation).
  3. Named accessibility contact (email required; phone recommended).
  4. Escalation procedure — AMA / ASAE for Tillgänglighetslagen equivalents; Banco de Portugal or ANACOM for sector matters.
  5. Assessment methodology (self-assessment, third-party audit, or combination) with date.
  6. Preparation and last-review dates.
  7. The declaração must itself be accessible; published in Portuguese (pt_PT).

How to comply — CI-first approach

  1. Baseline scan — axe-core 4.11 against the Portuguese-locale homepage and 10 critical flows.
  2. Complementary AccessMonitor check — AMA's tool provides a Portuguese-flavoured second reading on published URLs.
  3. Fix at source — overlay widgets do not satisfy EN 301 549. ASAE evaluates served HTML.
  4. CI gate — fail PRs on serious-severity regressions.
  5. Annual human audit — axe-core catches ~57% of WCAG issues. Commission an IAAP-certified auditor. Portuguese auditors (ACAPO, Instituto Sonae) are known references.
  6. Publish the declaração with AMA / ASAE escalation details in Portuguese.
  7. Retain evidence — per-PR axe-core scan history is the most defensible ongoing-diligence record.
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