Brazil

Brazil's accessibility regime is, on paper, one of the most ambitious in the Global South. The 2015 Brazilian Inclusion Law (Lei Brasileira de Inclusão da Pessoa com Deficiência) is a comprehensive disability-rights statute that pulls together two decades of sectoral legislation under a single umbrella. Above it sits the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities — which Brazil was the first country in the world to incorporate with constitutional-amendment status, under Article 5 §3 of the 1988 Federal Constitution. Enforcement is the harder story: the heavy lifting is done not by an accessibility agency but by the Federal Public Ministry, through civil class actions filed in the federal courts.

The constitutional and treaty floor

The 1988 Federal Constitution (Constituição da República Federativa do Brasil) sets out the foundation in four key articles. Article 5 guarantees equality before the law without distinction of any nature. Article 23, paragraph II assigns the federal Union, the states, the Federal District, and the municipalities concurrent material competence to "care for the health and public assistance, and the protection and guarantee of persons with disabilities." Article 24, paragraph XIV assigns the Union, the states, and the Federal District concurrent legislative competence over "the protection and social integration of persons with disabilities." Article 203 guarantees social assistance, including the Benefício de Prestação Continuada (BPC) — a monthly minimum-wage payment to persons with disabilities whose family income falls below a statutory threshold.

Brazil signed the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and its Optional Protocol on 30 March 2007 and ratified both on 1 August 2008. The convention entered into force domestically through Decreto Legislativo nº 186/2008 and the promulgating Decreto nº 6.949/2009. The decisive feature: both instruments were approved by the National Congress under the special procedure of Article 5 §3 of the Federal Constitution — a constitutional-amendment threshold of three-fifths in two rounds of voting in each chamber. The legal consequence is that the CRPD has constitutional rank in Brazilian law, not the ordinary statutory rank that international treaties usually take in monist or dualist systems. Brazil was the first country in the world to incorporate the CRPD at constitutional level, and one of only two treaties (alongside the New York Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Optional Protocol) to have been incorporated this way. The Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF) has repeatedly relied on the CRPD's constitutional status in striking down legislation and administrative practice that conflicts with the convention's accessibility, legal-capacity, and inclusive-education provisions.

The Brazilian Inclusion Law (LBI) — the central statute

The Brazilian Inclusion Law (Lei Brasileira de Inclusão da Pessoa com Deficiência, also titled Estatuto da Pessoa com Deficiência) — formally Lei nº 13.146 de 6 de julho de 2015 — was enacted on 6 July 2015 after a six-year legislative process and entered into force on 3 January 2016 after a 180-day vacatio legis. The LBI is structured as a comprehensive code: 127 articles spread across two books, covering the social-model definition of disability, civil capacity, accessibility, the right to health, education, work, social assistance, culture, sport, leisure, transport, science and technology, and judicial protection.

Three substantive provisions do most of the digital-accessibility work:

• Article 63 — websites. Mandates that websites maintained by companies headquartered in Brazil or by federal, state, and municipal government bodies contain accessibility resources, allowing access by persons with disabilities and conforming to "best practices and accessibility guidelines adopted internationally." In Brazilian regulatory practice this provision has been read as a binding cross-reference to WCAG and to the federal e-MAG standard for in-scope public bodies.
• Article 78 — ICT. Imposes a duty on public bodies to ensure accessibility of information and communication technologies, including ATM machines, self-service equipment, terminal equipment, and software. Paragraph 2 requires that public procurement of ICT goods and services give "priority" to accessible options where available.
• Articles 88 and 90 — penalties. Article 88 criminalises discrimination on the ground of disability with imprisonment of one to three years and fine; Article 90 imposes administrative fines of R$ 250 to R$ 240,000 (approximately USD 50 to USD 48,000) for violations of the LBI's broader protective regime, doubled for recidivism. These ranges were last adjusted by Lei nº 14.624/2023 to reflect cumulative inflation.

The LBI also modernised civil capacity. Articles 84 to 87 amended the Civil Code to abolish the legal regime of "absolute incapacity" for adults with intellectual or psychosocial disabilities and replaced it with the figure of tomada de decisão apoiada (supported decision-making). The change brought Brazilian civil law into alignment with Article 12 of the CRPD and ended a century-old paternalistic regime under which adults with intellectual disabilities could be civilly interdicted by family-court order.

Sectoral statutes around the LBI

The LBI sits on top of three older sectoral laws that remain in force and continue to define operational obligations:

Lei nº 10.436 de 24 de abril de 2002 — the Libras Law. Recognises Libras (Língua Brasileira de Sinais, Brazilian Sign Language) as a legal form of communication and expression, with a status that Brazilian constitutional scholars describe as quasi-constitutional given its interaction with the CRPD's Article 21. The implementing decree, Decreto nº 5.626/2005, mandates Libras interpretation in federal public services, the inclusion of Libras as a curricular subject in teacher-training programmes, and the gradual extension of Libras interpretation requirements to broadcast television. ANATEL polices the broadcast-television requirements; the courts have steadily expanded the doctrine to cover political-campaign advertising, official government communications, and emergency public-health announcements.

Decreto nº 5.296 de 2 de dezembro de 2004. The implementing decree for the older accessibility statutes Lei 10.048/2000 (priority service for persons with disabilities) and Lei 10.098/2000 (general accessibility) — but in practice the operational rulebook that the federal-government accessibility programme runs on. The decree sets technical accessibility rules for the built environment, transport, communication, and federal information systems, and it is the immediate parent of the e-MAG. Although it predates the LBI, it has not been formally superseded; the courts read the LBI and Decreto 5.296/2004 as complementary, with the decree filling in technical detail that the LBI sets at the level of principle.

Lei nº 12.764 de 27 de dezembro de 2012 — the Berenice Piana Law. Establishes the National Policy for the Protection of the Rights of Persons with Autism Spectrum Disorder and — its most consequential provision — declares that persons with autism are, for all legal purposes, persons with disability. That status assimilation pulls autism into the full scope of the LBI's protective architecture, including the digital-accessibility provisions, the BPC social-assistance benefit, and the special protections in education and labour law.

Technical standards: the e-MAG

Brazil's federal web-accessibility standard is the e-MAG (Modelo de Acessibilidade em Governo Eletrônico, "Accessibility Model for Electronic Government"), currently at version 3.1, governed by SECOM (the Government Secretariat for Social Communication, attached to the Presidency). The e-MAG is binding on federal public administration through the e-PWG (Padrões Web em Governo) framework and is incorporated by reference in federal-procurement specifications under the LBI.

Substantively, e-MAG 3.1 is aligned with WCAG 2.1 Level AA with a small set of Brazil-specific clarifications and a heavier emphasis on Portuguese-language conformance criteria for assistive-technology compatibility. The accompanying ASES (Avaliador e Simulador de Acessibilidade em Sítios) automated-evaluation tool, maintained by SECOM, is the official conformance-test instrument cited in MPF civil actions and in federal-procurement audits. State and municipal administrations are not formally bound to e-MAG but in practice almost universally adopt it, often through state-level decrees that import e-MAG by reference.

A formal e-MAG 3.2 update aligning to WCAG 2.2 is in the SECOM work plan for 2026, with public consultation expected through the first half of the year. The procurement-side implication is significant: federal ICT tenders increasingly cite "e-MAG version in force at the time of contract execution," which gives the standard's update cycle direct contractual purchase across the federal procurement system.

Penalties — the full exposure stack

A reader who looks only at the LBI's administrative-fine table — R$ 250 to R$ 240,000 — would underestimate the regulatory exposure by an order of magnitude. The fine column is the floor of a five-layer stack: (1) administrative fines under the LBI and the Consumer Defence Code; (2) civil moral damages, uncapped under the Brazilian Civil Code; (3) the Ação Civil Pública route, which converts an individual accessibility failure into a class-level remedy; (4) public-procurement disqualification under Lei 14.133/2021; and (5) criminal exposure under LBI Article 88 (one to three years' imprisonment) for the most serious discrimination cases. All figures are presented in Brazilian reais (BRL / R$) with US-dollar reference values at an indicative rate of R$ 5.00 = USD 1.00 — the actual rate fluctuates and the statutes are denominated in reais.

Layer 1 — administrative fines

Administrative penalties operate primarily under Article 90 of the LBI, with parallel exposure under the Consumer Defence Code (Código de Defesa do Consumidor, Lei 8.078/1990, "CDC") when the accessibility failure also constitutes an unfair commercial practice — which it routinely does in e-commerce and consumer-banking cases.

The headline LBI fines are modest by the standards of comparable Latin American regimes — Mexico's LGIPD caps at roughly 3,000 UMA (≈ MXN 326,000) and Argentina's Ley 22.431 framework runs lower still — but the table understates Brazilian exposure substantially. The CDC and ANATEL columns are where the large numbers live, and the Ação Civil Pública route (layer 3) routinely produces remedies in the tens of millions of reais.

Layer 2 — civil moral damages (uncapped)

Brazilian tort law (Código Civil, arts. 186, 187, 927, and 944) imposes liability for both material damages (danos materiais) and moral damages (danos morais) on any actor whose conduct causes injury to another. There is no statutory cap on moral damages. Brazilian courts assess them by reference to the severity of the breach, the duration of the discriminatory conduct, the size and resources of the respondent, and the educational/deterrent function (função pedagógica) of the award. In disability-discrimination cases involving inaccessible online banking, inaccessible e-commerce checkouts, and inaccessible government portals, individual moral-damage awards have typically fallen in the R$ 5,000 – R$ 50,000 range (USD 1,000 – 10,000), with the higher end reserved for cases involving repeated refusals or severe consequences for the consumer. The Superior Tribunal de Justiça (STJ) has affirmed awards in this range in dozens of decisions over the last decade.

Layer 3 — Ação Civil Pública and collective enforcement

The single most consequential feature of Brazilian disability enforcement is the Ação Civil Pública (ACP, Public Civil Action) regime, established by Lei nº 7.347 de 24 de julho de 1985. The ACP empowers the Federal Public Ministry (MPF), the state Public Ministries (MPE), the Defensoria Pública, and authorised civil-society associations to bring collective actions to protect "diffuse and collective interests" — a category that the courts have long held includes the rights of persons with disabilities.

In digital-accessibility cases, the MPF is the dominant litigant. The procedural model produces three kinds of remedy: (a) obrigações de fazer (mandatory injunctions requiring the defendant to make a website, app, or service accessible by a court-set deadline); (b) astreintes (per-day penalties for non-compliance, frequently set in the R$ 10,000 – R$ 100,000 / day range and routinely upheld on appeal); and (c) danos morais coletivos (collective moral damages, paid into the Federal Fund for Diffuse Rights, the Fundo de Defesa de Direitos Difusos). Collective moral-damage awards in disability-accessibility ACPs have been settled or adjudicated in amounts ranging from R$ 100,000 to several million reais — substantially above the LBI's administrative-fine ceiling.

The MPF maintains specialised disability-rights working groups in every federal region and has produced a steady caseload over the last decade against major Brazilian retail banks, e-commerce platforms, federal-government portals, and broadcasters. The Defensoria Pública da União (DPU) plays a complementary role, frequently joining MPF actions or bringing parallel actions on behalf of named individual claimants.

Layer 4 — public-procurement disqualification

The Brazilian Public Procurement Law, Lei nº 14.133 de 1º de abril de 2021 (the Nova Lei de Licitações), requires contracting authorities to consider accessibility from the technical-specification stage onward (art. 11) and authorises disqualification of bidders that have been administratively or judicially declared to have committed serious infractions — a category that includes adjudicated LBI violations and final ACP judgments. For vendors selling into the Brazilian federal, state, or municipal public sector — a market of approximately R$ 200 billion per year in goods and services — the loss of bid eligibility on an active procurement routinely exceeds the administrative fine that triggered the disqualification by one to three orders of magnitude.

Layer 5 — criminal exposure

Article 88 of the LBI criminalises discrimination on the basis of disability with imprisonment of one to three years and fine, with the penalty aggravated when the discrimination is practised through "mass communication or by any means of publication," when it affects persons under 18 or over 60, or when it is committed by a public agent in the exercise of their functions. Criminal prosecutions under Article 88 are rare in the digital-accessibility context — the standard enforcement pathway is the ACP, not the criminal information — but the provision functions as the upper bound on regulatory exposure for the most egregious cases of systemic exclusion.

Enforcement record and outlook

Brazil's enforcement record sits squarely with the Federal Public Ministry. A search of the federal court system's Justiça em Números reporting for 2023–2025 identifies more than two thousand active Ações Civis Públicas with a digital-accessibility component — covering inaccessible banking apps, inaccessible federal and state-government portals, inaccessible broadcast captioning, and inaccessible election-system materials. The Supremo Tribunal Federal has issued a steady line of decisions reinforcing the constitutional status of the CRPD and treating inaccessibility as a constitutional-rights violation rather than a mere statutory infraction — most prominently ADI 5357 (2016), which upheld the LBI's inclusive-education provisions, and a chain of subsequent decisions extending the same reasoning to digital services.

The Superior Tribunal de Justiça has built a parallel line of consumer-law jurisprudence that treats digital inaccessibility as an unfair commercial practice under the CDC and grounds for moral damages without the need to prove specific material loss. The result is an enforcement landscape where the formal administrative-fine instruments are underused but the litigation-driven pathway is highly active — by Latin American standards, exceptionally so.

On the regulatory-architecture side, the most active body is CONADE (the National Council on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities), which serves both as the policy-coordination forum inside MDHC and as Brazil's CRPD Article 33 independent monitoring mechanism. CONADE convenes representatives of disability organisations, line ministries, and federal agencies, and produces an annual monitoring report on national CRPD implementation that feeds into Brazil's periodic reporting to the UN CRPD Committee.

What's coming in 2026–27

Three developments to watch. First, the SECOM update of e-MAG to align with WCAG 2.2 is in the 2026 work plan, with public consultation expected through the first half of the year; once published, it will be incorporated by reference into federal procurement specifications, with knock-on effects on the state and municipal administrations that mirror federal standards. Second, the federal data-protection authority (ANPD) and the Ministry of Justice's consumer-protection secretariat (SENACON) are jointly developing guidance on the intersection of the General Data Protection Law (LGPD, Lei 13.709/2018) with the LBI's accessibility obligations, with a focus on accessible privacy notices and accessible consent flows. Third, Brazil's next periodic report to the UN CRPD Committee is due in 2027, and the National Plan for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities — adopted by the Lula administration in 2024 — will be the document against which progress is measured.

The MPF's litigation pipeline shows no sign of slowing. Working groups in the federal regions have published 2025–2026 priority lists that converge on banking-app accessibility, accessibility of state-government services portals, broadcast-captioning enforcement under ANATEL Resolução 667/2016 and its successors, and accessibility of the electronic procurement platforms operated under Lei 14.133/2021.