Accessibility

Accessibility (often referred to as digital accessibility or web accessibility) is the practice of designing products and experiences so that people with disabilities can perceive, navigate, and interact with them just as effectively as anyone else. That includes users relying on screen readers, people with low vision or color blindness, users with motor impairments who navigate by keyboard alone, and people with cognitive or hearing disabilities. In practice, it means color contrast that meets WCAG standards, interfaces that work without a mouse, alt text that actually describes content, and forms that make sense to assistive technology, not just to sighted users clicking through quickly.

What often gets missed is that accessibility isn't a compliance checkbox you tack on at the end, it's a design discipline that, done early, tends to make the entire product better for everyone. Larger touch targets, clearer navigation, better-structured content: these are accessibility wins, but they're also just good UX. Companies that treat accessibility as an afterthought usually end up retrofitting it under pressure, which costs far more than building it in from the start.

This is also why the European Accessibility Act matters so much, beyond being another regulation to check off. Accessibility isn't just a technical checklist — it's about dignity, independence, and the right to belong. The EAA came into force on 28 June 2025, meaning that in-scope products and services placed on the market from that point on need to be built with accessibility in mind, and it applies broadly across sectors, from banking to e-commerce to public services. Behind that requirement is something much simpler than legal language usually suggests: a person with low vision should be able to check their bank balance without help, someone using a screen reader should be able to buy groceries online, and a person with limited mobility should be able to book a doctor's appointment on their own terms, without depending on someone else to do it for them.

In the EU alone, this concerns around 101 million citizens with disabilities — people who, for a long time, have had to navigate a digital world that simply wasn't built with them in mind. What the EAA does, in a very practical sense, is shift the responsibility back onto the businesses building these products, rather than leaving people to work around barriers on their own. And that shift benefits more people than you'd expect — older adults adapting to new technology, people with temporary injuries, parents holding a child in one arm while trying to use their phone with the other. Designing for accessibility from the start means fewer people are quietly excluded from things everyone else takes for granted.

There's also a reputational layer to this. Accessibility signals that a company designs with care and attention to detail, not just for the average user but for the full range of people who might land on a page or open an app. For enterprise clients evaluating vendors — especially in banking, healthcare, or public-sector work — accessibility compliance is increasingly a baseline requirement, not a differentiator. Not meeting it can quietly disqualify a company before a conversation even starts.

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