1. Overview
A website audit stops at the edge of the page. Clauses 10 and 12 of EN 301 549 cover what lies beyond it. That means the PDFs, spreadsheets and presentations people download. It also means the information and support that surround a product or service.
Clause 10 applies the WCAG 2.2 success criteria to "non-web documents". It makes a handful of adjustments for things like document titles and sets of documents.
Clause 12 has a new title in V4.1.1: "Information about products and services". It has two jobs. Clauses 12.1 and 12.2 cover digital information about a product or a service. That information must itself meet clause 9, 10 or 11, depending on its format. Clause 12.3 says that the documentation for a product must tell people three things. These are what its accessibility features are, how to use them and how to get support for them. Clauses 12.4 and 12.5 deal with electronic programme guides.
These clauses matter more under the European Accessibility Act (EAA) than they did under the Web Accessibility Directive. That is because the EAA's Annex I is largely about information. It covers:
- how a product's instructions reach the user
- how a service explains its own accessibility
- what support services have to be able to tell customers.
This lesson covers both clauses. Then it follows the Annex ZB tables that connect them to the Directive.
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Sources
- ETSI, CEN and CENELEC, EN 301 549 V4.1.1 (2026-09), clauses 10.0 to 10.7 and 12.1 to 12.5, Tables A.2 and A.5, and Annex ZB, available from the ETSI standards server.
- Directive (EU) 2019/882 (the European Accessibility Act), Annex I, Sections I, II and III.
- W3C, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 and the Group Note Guidance on Applying WCAG 2 to Non-Web Information and Communications Technologies (WCAG2ICT), which clause 10 follows.
