Ready for the Accessibility Revolution? Your 2025 Guide to Compliance
When the European Accessibility Act arrived in 2025, digital accessibility became more than a checkbox—it was your invitation to reach, include, and engage everyone. Discover who’s affected, how the four WCAG principles future-proof your business, and why ignoring this is a costly mistake.
Is your business ready? Navigating the European Accessibility Act
As of June 28, 2025, the European Accessibility Act (EAA) ushers in a new digital era. For businesses across Europe, this is a legal milestone and a powerful commercial opportunity: to make your digital universe accessible to all who wish to enter.
But this is more than compliance; it's about connection. In Denmark alone, close to 30% of individuals aged 16–64 report having a disability. That's nearly one in three potential customers, employees, and partners who could be excluded by poorly designed digital experiences. By embracing accessibility, you open doors—welcoming more people, enriching user journeys, and unlocking a significant market segment that values inclusive brands.
The Business Case: Beyond Compliance to Customer Retention
Ignoring accessibility isn't just a legal risk; it's a direct hit to your bottom line. Consider the numbers:
Visual Impairments: Over 320,000 people in Denmark live with significant sight loss.
Hearing Impairments: More than 600,000 Danes are deaf or hard of hearing.
Cognitive & Motor Disabilities: Millions more navigate the web with conditions like dyslexia, autism, or physical limitations that affect how they use a mouse or keyboard.
When your website isn't accessible, you are actively turning these users away. They will struggle to complete purchases, understand your content, or use your services. They will simply click over to a competitor who has prioritized their experience. Accessibility isn't a cost—it's an investment in customer acquisition, loyalty, and market share.
Who does the law touch?
The EAA spans both private and public sectors. If your business offers any of the following customer-facing digital experiences, the new rules apply:
E-commerce platforms — from immersive webshops to agile mobile apps
Banking and financial services
Computers, smartphones, and the operating systems they run
Streaming platforms and e-books
Self-service terminals such as ATMs, ticket machines, and digital check-in kiosks
The foundation for compliance is clear: adopt the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1. These international standards form the bridge to digital equality, making your interfaces both compliant and intuitive for all.
WCAG unpacked: The four cornerstones of an inclusive business
Accessibility is a philosophy built on four core principles—summed up as POUR: Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, Robust. Here’s how to put them into practice.
1. Perceivable: Content that reaches everyone
Your content must be available to all senses, not just sight.
Text Alternatives (Alt Text): Every image, icon, or chart needs meaningful alt-text. This isn't just a technical requirement—it’s how you describe your visual content to users with screen readers. For infographics, provide a detailed text summary of the key data points.
Media for All: Add accurate captions to all videos for the deaf and hard of hearing. Provide audio descriptions for crucial visual information in videos.
Visual Clarity: Ensure text has a minimum contrast ratio of 4.5:1 against its background. Never convey information using colour alone (e.g., "click the red button"), as this excludes colour-blind users.
2. Operable: Navigation for every ability
Users must be able to navigate and interact with your site using their tool of choice.
Full Keyboard Control: Every interactive element—menus, forms, buttons—must be usable with a keyboard alone. This is essential for users with motor impairments who cannot use a mouse.
Time & Safety: Provide controls to pause, stop, or extend time limits for reading or completing forms. Eliminate content that flashes more than three times per second to prevent seizures.
Clear Navigation: Structure your menus and pages with consistent, logical headings so users always know where they are. This builds confidence for everyone, especially those using screen readers.
3. Understandable: Content that speaks clearly
Your information and interface must be easy to comprehend.
Simple Language & Structure: Write in clear, concise terms. Structure your content with a proper heading hierarchy (H1, H2, H3)—don’t just make text big and bold. This creates a clear map for all users, especially those with cognitive disabilities or screen readers.
Predictable Interactions: Buttons and links should behave consistently across your entire site. A "Submit" button should always perform the same type of action.
Helpful Error Handling: Forms need clear labels, straightforward instructions, and error messages that explicitly tell users what went wrong and how to fix it.
4. Robust: Built for today and tomorrow
Your content must be compatible with current and future assistive technologies.
Clean, Standards-Based Code: Use semantic HTML (e.g.,
<button>for buttons,<nav>for navigation). This ensures screen readers, browsers, and emerging tools can reliably interpret your content. Proper code is the bedrock of robustness.
Essential Tools for Your Accessibility Toolkit
Integrating accessibility is easier with the right technology. Here are five powerful tools to help you design, build, and test for inclusivity:
Color.review: This simple web tool instantly analyzes the contrast ratio of foreground and background text colours against WCAG guidelines. It’s perfect for quick checks during the design process.
A11y - Color Contrast Checker (Figma Plugin): Bake accessibility directly into your design workflow. This Figma plugin allows you to check colour contrast, simulate colour blindness, and ensure your palettes are compliant without leaving your design file.
Sim Daltonism (macOS & iOS): This colour blindness simulator lets you visualise your designs and websites through the eyes of users with various types of colour vision deficiencies. It’s an invaluable tool for catching issues that contrast checkers alone might miss.
NVDA (Windows) / VoiceOver (macOS & iOS): The most critical test is using your product as your users do. These free, built-in screen readers (NVDA for Windows, VoiceOver for Apple devices) are industry standards. Learning to navigate your site with them is the best way to understand the experience of blind and low-vision users.
Lighthouse (Chrome DevTools): This open-source, automated tool integrated directly into Chrome’s Developer Tools can audit any page for performance, SEO, and—crucially—accessibility. It provides a quick overview of common issues and is a fantastic starting point for any audit.
Ready to get started?
Accessibility shouldn’t be an afterthought. To truly succeed, bake it into your process from the very beginning of every project:
In Design: Consider font sizes, colour contrast, and keyboard navigation during the UI design phase.
In Development: Use semantic HTML and ARIA landmarks to ensure screen reader compatibility.
In Content: Write clear alt text for images, captions for videos, and structure your text with proper headings.
In Testing: Conduct regular audits using both automated tools and manual testing by users with disabilities.
Accessibility isn’t the finish line; it’s the foundation. Where could your digital experience take you when everyone has a seat at the table? The journey to a more inclusive and successful business starts here.
