RGAA, France's digital accessibility standard

Who must comply

Article 47 of loi n° 2005-102 of 11 February 2005 requires the online services of these organisations to be accessible:

• Public-law bodies: the State, local authorities and public establishments.
• Private bodies with a public-service mission, or created for a need of general interest and mostly funded, controlled or appointed by public bodies.
• Companies whose turnover exceeds the threshold set by decree: an average turnover in France of EUR 250 million over the last three financial years (décret n° 2019-768, article 2).

"Online services" is broad: the law names websites, intranets, extranets, mobile apps, software packages and the interactive part of digital street furniture. Non-profits that provide neither essential services nor services for disabled people are outside it. Consumer services such as e-commerce and banking are also covered, below that threshold too and unless the provider is a microenterprise, by the European Accessibility Act, which France has applied since 28 June 2025.

What you must publish

1. An accessibility statement (déclaration d'accessibilité), following DINUM's model: the conformity status, the content that is not accessible and why, and a way to report a barrier or ask for an accessible alternative. DINUM says it must be updated after a substantial redesign and at least every three years.
2. A multi-year plan (schéma pluriannuel) of no more than three years, made public and broken down into annual action plans.
3. A clearly visible mention on the homepage stating whether the service conforms, such as Accessibilité : partiellement conforme, with direct access to the statement, the plan and the current year's action plan.

The status comes from an RGAA audit. DINUM defines three: fully conformant when every RGAA criterion is met; partially conformant when at least 50% are; and not conformant below 50%, or when there is no valid audit.

Enforcement and fines

Since the ordinance of 6 September 2023, article 47-1 makes Arcom, the French audiovisual and digital regulator, responsible for enforcement. Its sworn agents investigate, Arcom gives formal notice with a deadline, and if the breach continues it can fine:

• up to EUR 50,000 for failing the accessibility requirement itself;
• up to EUR 25,000 for failing to publish the statement, the plan or the homepage mention;
• and again if the same breach persists six months after a sanction.

Arcom states that for companies above the turnover threshold it checks the publication obligations only, while for public bodies it also checks conformity with the RGAA. On 24 June 2026 it gave the Ministry of Public Action and Accounts formal notice over www.impots.gouv.fr, citing inaccessible PDFs, keyboard failures, hidden menu content and badly marked-up table headers, plus a statement that overstated conformity. The ministry was given nine months for the accessibility defects and two months for the statement and action plan.

What changed in 2026, and RGAA 5

Décret n° 2026-816, in force since 27 August 2026, rewrote the 2019 decree. Accessibility is now defined by the harmonised standards cited in the EU's Official Journal under the Web Accessibility Directive, today EN 301 549 V3.2.1, and the RGAA must be kept in line with them. The minister for disabled people now monitors public bodies' sites every year, with information from Arcom.

RGAA 5 is expected at the end of 2026. DINUM has announced WCAG 2.2, new criteria and tests for mobile apps and office documents, simpler criteria that clarify rather than contradict 4.1.2, and a new service for filing statements. Statements made before it is published stay valid for 18 months, within their three-year limit. DINUM's advice is not to wait: work done against 4.1.2 carries over. Fixing to WCAG 2.2 Level AA now covers the extra criteria RGAA 5 is expected to add.

All 106 criteria, and what a scan checks

Each row gives DINUM's criterion in French, a plain English summary, the WCAG criteria it maps to, and what an Accessibility Pro scan does with it. Each row lists every rule in our public rule catalogue that reports under it, which is how a report files its findings. A test fails our build if a listed rule does not exist, tests a different WCAG criterion without a stated reason, or if a catalogue rule for a WCAG criterion RGAA uses is left unlisted.

Automated

14 criteria. A rule tests the condition on every page we scan.

Partly

53 criteria. Rules catch some failures; a person checks the rest, usually whether something is relevant.

Needs a person

39 criteria. No rule we run tests them, such as captions, site maps and office documents.

So a scan cannot give you an RGAA conformity rate, and nobody's can: the rate counts every applicable criterion, and 39 of them need a person. What it gives you is every failure it can measure, on every page and every scan, so an auditor's time goes to the criteria only a person can judge. On the Team plan, each report's Compliance tab files its findings under these criteria.

Using a scan in an RGAA programme

• Before the audit. Fix what the scan finds first, so the audit is spent on judgement, not on missing labels and contrast.
• Between audits. A statement stays valid for three years, and sites change weekly. A scan after each release, or the GitHub Action on every pull request, catches regressions before they reach users.
• For the action plan. Findings come with the page, the element and a proposed code fix, which is what an annual action plan needs.

On the Team plan, each report's Compliance tab shows every RGAA criterion as non conforme (a failure found), to verify, no failure found, or needing a person, and never as conforme. It also drafts a déclaration d'accessibilité in DINUM's format, in French, listing the criteria the scan found failing and leaving the conformity status, the rate and everything only you know blank. See the compliance reporting overview and the field audit of how the scanner performs on real sites