The Understandability of Consumer Banking Disclosures under the EU Accessibility Act

Since 28 June 2025, Directive (EU) 2019/882 on the accessibility requirements for products and services (AA) requires firms offering banking services (eg, consumer credit products) to provide consumers information that is ‘understandable, without exceeding a level of complexity superior to level B2 (upper intermediate) of the Council of Europe’s Common European Framework of Reference for Languages’ (the understandability rule). The rule seeks to promote the inclusion of people with disabilities as users of financial services, focusing on access barriers related to neurodiversity, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). To this end, it uses a common regulatory technique, regulating disclosure quality by imposing a principle-based standard, to address issues of linguistic complexity. 

The Understandability Rule

Ironically enough, the rule lacks clarity. The notion of understandable is not defined or clarified in the AA. In addition, the scope of the rule is unclear. Whether firms must repaper their disclosures required under other EU financial and consumer protection regulatory frameworks and their terms and conditions, is not prima facie discernible from the text. 

In a recently published article titled ‘The Understandability of Accessible Consumer Banking Services Disclosures’ (European Journal of Risk Regulation), I offer an interpretation of the rule and its scope. 

Meaning and Scope

In order to interpret the understandability rule, I use the interpretation methods of EU law commonly used by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU): grammatical, teleological, systemic and comparative interpretation. 

With the grammatical and systemic methods, I reach the conclusion that the rule applies to the AA’s rule requiring firms to provide information about the ‘service’, as defined in the Services Directive and incorporated by reference in the AA. In other words, it should only apply to this disclosure (narrow scope of application), and not to disclosure and papering obligations under other Directives. Furthermore, as the rule only applies to providers of consumer banking services, the rule singles out this class of economic operators. They are the only class of operators that is subject to a standard that effectively sets an upper bound on the linguistic complexity of their disclosures.

The narrow application is also supported by the teleological method, which draws on the evolution of the rule during the legislative process and the European Parliament’s commentary. Finally, using the comparative method I find that the Web Accessibility Directive provides inspiration that firms can use a layered approach to ensure that disclosures are understandable.

EU Financial and Consumer Protection Law

To render the analysis more robust, I contrast the rule with the advertising, pre-contractual and contractual disclosure obligations under the EU rules applicable to ‘consumer banking services’ (as defined in the AA), including the Consumer Credit Directive (Directive 2008/48/EC, to be repealed by Directive 2023/2225/EU) and the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (Directive 2014/65/EU). Next to these sectoral regulations, I also cover the main transversal frameworks, the Unfair Contract Terms Directive (Directive 91/13/EEC) and the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive (Directive 2005/29/EC). 

In my view, these rules are formally and teleologically different from the understandability rule. Most importantly, they focus on the provision of specific information elements with reference to the average consumer standard, which is different from the AA’s standard and its focus on inclusion of neurodiverse consumers. This conclusion supports the narrow application of the understandability rule.

The Importance of Regulatory Technique

To reiterate, the understandability rule serves an important cause: financial inclusion. The reasoning in the article stresses the importance of this policy objective. Today’s state of technology, eg, agentic AI technology, offers much promise through tailoring of the linguistic complexity and layering of information for the individual consumer.

Regulatory technique is important, however. In the final part of the piece, I draw attention to the implications of the EU regulatory principles of legal certainty and coherence for the interpretation of the rule. I conclude that the principle of legal certainty supports the narrow application, while the principle of coherence (especially in light of the EU’s broader retail finance sector policy) requires duly reconciling the inclusion and empowerment objectives.

Regulatory technique will also be important in the evolution of the understandability rule. Given these issues of interpretation surrounding the rule, the CJEU, national courts and supervisory authorities will be important driving forces behind the AA’s shaping of retail disclosures in the years to come.

The author’s article can be found here.

Melvin Tjon Akon is a Lawyer at DLA Piper Luxembourg specialising in European Financial Regulation.