Companies doing business in Europe only have less than six months left to get ready to comply with the European Accessibility Act (EEA).
“An environment where products and services are more accessible allows for a more inclusive society and facilitates independent living for persons with disabilities,” the EU lawmakers wrote — and this could soon become a reality.
As of June, this landmark law won’t simply encourage businesses to make their digital products and services more accessible; it will also have teeth. Fines and penalties vary by country, but can reach up to €500,000 in Germany.
Encouraging is great, but fines really do help. In a podcast episode, Microsoft France accessibility lead, Philippe Trotin, explained that digital accessibility started to take off in the U.S. fifteen years ago when corporations decided they didn’t want to constantly get sued. Instead, they made the effort to work on making their sites more accessible.
As of June, this landmark law won’t simply encourage businesses to make their digital products and services more accessible; it will also have teeth.
Europe lags behind in that regard, but things are about to change. “What GDPR did for data protection, this act will do for accessibility,” Irish entrepreneur Cormac Chisholm predicted on stage last November in Helsinki during tech conference Slush.
The startup he co-founded, DevAlly, helps businesses comply with the European Accessibility Act. It is still in closed beta, but becoming one of the top three startup competition finalists in the Slush 100 startup competition boosted its notoriety, and it was recently named as one of the top Irish tech firms to watch in 2025 by Irish news outlet Business Post.
DevAlly co-founders - left to right Darren Britton CTO, Cormac Chisholm CEO, and Patrick Guiney-Fox COO.
While it is getting inbound requests from the Big Four and the Big Four’s clients, DevAlly has competitors, such as enterprise-focused Evinced, which recently raised a $55 million Series C round of funding; but there’s no shortage of work to go around. “Today, 97% of the web is inaccessible for people with disabilities,” Chisholm said.
Globally, one in six people live with a disability
Some tweaks are straightforward; for instance, making sure links are underlined so that they are clearly clickable to people with color blindness—a condition that affects up to one in 12 men and one in 200 women.
Other adjustments, such as supporting navigation with keyboard shortcuts, require more effort. But more importantly, DevAlly believes that accessibility needs to be integrated into the design process, and not be an afterthought.
The accessibility community had already voiced its dislike for web accessibility overlays (which automatically add various accessibility features like readable fonts, with little work from the original developer). Now, the Federal Trade Commission decisively weighed in on the discussion, requiring software provider accessiBe to pay $1 million for deceptive claims that its AI product could make websites compliant with accessibility guidelines.
The European Commission already made it clear that overlays won’t fly, noting that “claims that a website can be made fully compliant in an automated fashion are not realistic.” The EEA itself calls for accessibility to be preferably achieved “through a universal design or ‘design for all’ approach.”
While ambitious, this approach could also bear unexpected fruit. Just like captions are now ubiquitous on TikTok, and dark mode a widely used option, more accessible websites could be better for everyone. For businesses, this also means that this is much more than a cost center; not losing out on clicks from people with color blindness, for instance, could increase sales.
Launched at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos in January 2019, The Valuable 500 is a global organization of over 500 partners and companies embracing this transition, rather than enduring it.
“This proactive approach to accessibility isn't just about meeting legal requirements; it's about recognizing the business opportunity in creating products and services that work for everyone, including the one in six of us with a disability,” said the organization’s CEO, Katy Talikowska.
About 24% of the total U.K. population reported having a disability, but employment rates are much lower, although growing efforts are made to make the workforce more inclusive. In a joint case study with the Valuable 500, U.K. broadcaster Sky disclosed that 9% of its employees self-identify as disabled.
This gives Sky direct insights into accessibility needs, and together with EY, it is also championing the creation of a global research panel of 5,000 people with disabilities. “Listening to our accessibility user groups at Sky we will create the products of tomorrow as well as a more inclusive and open culture,” the company stated in its commitment to the Valuable 500.
“As we approach the implementation of the European Accessibility Act, Valuable 500 companies like Sky are demonstrating how businesses can turn compliance requirements into meaningful organizational transformation,” Talikowska said.
This transformation may also trickle down, with accessibility compliance becoming a must, and not just a nice-to-have. “A lot of companies now, particularly enterprise companies, are making it a prerequisite in order to do business with mid-scale companies,” Chisholm said.
This could make accessibility compliance akin to other requirements such as SOC2. This bodes well for DevAlly: market leader Vanta recently raised $150 million at a $2.45 billion valuation, and compliance-focused startups are booming.
Another common thread between these startups is their use of AI. According to Chisholm, replacing manual processes will help reduce the cost of accessibility, making it possible for companies to ensure that their products are built for everybody from the ground up.
