Japan · Accessibility law

What changed in Japan on April 1, 2024, and what it means for your website

The amended Act for Eliminating Discrimination against Persons with Disabilities made reasonable accommodation mandatory for businesses. It did not make web accessibility itself mandatory, but it changed what a site that people cannot use costs you. Here is the difference, with the sources.

Two duties, often confused

• Mandatory since April 1, 2024

  Reasonable accommodation (合理的配慮の提供)

  When a person with a disability asks you to remove a barrier in a specific situation, you must respond with a necessary and reasonable measure, unless it would be an excessive burden. It used to be an effort obligation for businesses; government bodies were already bound by it.

  For a website: a customer who cannot finish your form with a screen reader asks for help, and you have to offer a workable way, such as another channel or assistance, and talk it through with them.

• Effort obligation (unchanged)

  Improving the environment (環境の整備)

  Improving facilities, information and training in advance, so that fewer people need to ask in the first place. Information accessibility, websites included, is named as part of it. This stays an effort obligation.

  For a website: making it usable with a keyboard, a screen reader and zoom before anyone has to ask. JIS X 8341-3:2016 is the standard most often used to measure it.

What the law does not say

“Web accessibility became mandatory in 2024.”

What became mandatory for businesses is reasonable accommodation, responding to a request. Making the site accessible in advance remains an effort obligation.

“Not meeting JIS X 8341-3 is against the law.”

The law does not require businesses to conform to JIS X 8341-3. It is a voluntary standard, and the usual way to show how accessible a site is.

“An overlay widget makes us compliant.”

A toolbar does not fix the site underneath it, and it does not answer a customer who still cannot use the form. In the US, an overlay vendor was ordered to pay $1 million by the FTC over such claims.

Why work on the site before anyone asks

• Fewer requests to handle one by one

  Every barrier fixed in advance is one fewer customer who has to ask, and one fewer accommodation your staff has to improvise.

• A clear answer when someone asks

  A JIS 試験結果 states what was tested, against which criteria, and what is still being fixed. That is a far better answer than “we are working on it”.

• Customers and buyers ask for it

  Public bodies are asked to meet JIS X 8341-3 Level AA and to publish their results every year, and that expectation reaches the companies that build and sell to them.

• If you sell into the EU, it is already law there

  Since June 28, 2025, the European Accessibility Act covers e-commerce and other services sold to EU consumers, including by companies based in Japan. It is measured against EN 301 549.

What EaseWeb does

A JIS X 8341-3 試験結果, in the WAIC format

対応度 (準拠 or 一部準拠), the 達成基準チェックリスト, the pages tested and how they were chosen, the technologies relied upon, and the 今後の対応方針 an 一部準拠 statement needs.

One test, three standards

The same results reported against JIS X 8341-3, Section 508 (US) and EN 301 549 (EU), so a company selling in several markets is tested once.

Tested by hand, fixed in your code

Keyboard, screen readers and zoom, by a DHS-certified Trusted Tester. Fixes go into your own code and are retested, in Japanese and English.