About Accessibility (less than a year to go!)
Next summer's hot topic will be Accessibility. Let's start talking about it now.
What we mean when we talk about Accessibility
The European Accessibility Act
How to prepare
What we can do for you
In Europe, there are 135 million people with disabilities of various kinds who face a range of difficulties in their daily lives. And they often encounter so-called digital barriers.
What we mean when we talk about Accessibility
Digital accessibility is the set of practices and technologies aimed at making online content usable by everyone, including people with disabilities: it is the key to ensuring equal access to information, services and digital resources.
Promoting accessibility is not only a legal obligation, but also an ethical and social commitment that contributes to creating a fairer and more inclusive digital world for all.
At 20tab we pay great attention to this issue in the products we develop: last year we were also involved in the 🟢Django Software Foundation's study of the UX of the Django Project website. We studied usability, information architecture, style, and accessibility.
And while the heuristic evaluation revealed the first improvements needed in this regard, the interviews revealed the community's focus on the more comprehensive aspect of accessibility.
"It should be a given that a foundation website is fully accessible. A community-funded and community-driven project for the most part. So we should work even harder than the for-profit sector to not leave people out."
And that is exactly where the European Accessibility Act comes in.
The European Accessibility Act
In the public sector, publicly funded EU websites have been required to comply with WCAG 2.1 standards for years. Now, the European Accessibility Act (EAA) is introducing robust legislation for the private sector.
The EAA is the European Union's most recent piece of legislation, scheduled for implementation in 2025. Specifically, it applies to:
digital services
e-commerce
electronic devices
banking services
transport
media
publishing
Its goal is to ensure that people with disabilities and the elderly have easy access to a wide range of services and products.
Complying with the EAA means not only avoiding legal challenges, but also opening access to a wider audience and positioning yourself as an ethical brand committed to the most important issues of our time. But not only that.
Accessibility will become a benchmark of quality and inclusiveness in the digital marketplace: compliance also increases customer satisfaction and loyalty by providing an inclusive user experience.
It becomes a commitment to all customers, not just those with disabilities.
How to prepare
Companies have until June 28, 2025 to improve the accessibility and inclusion of their digital products. For many, this could mean taking broad and comprehensive action on their platform to achieve EAA compliance - so the advice is to get to work now.
Here are the 4 key steps to ensure you are not caught off guard:
Assess whether your platform is covered by the EAA 2025: if you sell products/services to a European audience, the answer is yes.
Conduct an assessment of your portal to see how accessible it is today.
Based on these results, and keeping the WACG in mind, perform an analysis to prioritize actions to improve accessibility and adapt your platform to the requirements.
Start to take action and optimize your platform by initiating a series of accessibility assessment cycles so that you are always compliant.
What we can do for you
At 20tab, we have always designed 🟣software solutions starting from the users, including those with disabilities: trust us to find out how accessible your platform is and bring it up to the standards set by the EAA.
August is our time to rest and prepare for the second half of the year.
👇🏼 Disclosure returns in September, but the topics are up to you.