In both European and Italian contexts, accessibility is increasingly recognized as a fundamental principle in the digital world. This growing interest is not a passing trend, but an essential response to the digital era where ensuring content access for all is crucial for social equity and integration. This push is supported by debates and the evolution of European legislation, including the Accessibility Act, and specifically in Italy through the Stanca Law, which mandates companies to make their websites accessible or face penalties.
Compliance with regulations is certainly a wake-up call, but the goal should not merely be to avoid fines; adapting existing portals or creating new digital products accessible by design should not be seen as a constraint, but as an opportunity to enhance user experience and expand the pool of potential customers.
Consider these numbers: 15% of the global population has some form of disability, yet 96% of home pages currently online do not comply with WCAG guidelines, effectively making them inaccessible to many people.
(Source: https://webaim.org/projects/million/).
From an economic standpoint, Gartner estimates that the disposable income of people (and their families) with disabilities amounts to 8 trillion dollars. In Italy, according to ISTAT data, the audience of people with a spectrum of disabilities is about 3 million, or 5% of the population, equivalent to the combined inhabitants of Milan, Turin, Bologna, and Palermo. This audience represents a significant market segment; thus, not investing in inclusive and accessible design proves to be a neglected commercial opportunity, as well as a disservice to those many potential customers.
Accessibility Overlays: a false sense of security
Web accessibility overlays are tools or technologies that aim to improve the accessibility of a website. Automatically repairing accessibility issues requires that those issues can be found automatically. Claims that a website can be made fully compliant without manual intervention are not realistic, since no automated tool can cover all the WCAG 2.1 level A and AA criteria.
In other words, overlay tools may make a website less accessible for some users.
(European Commission)
There are methods and tools on the market aimed at enhancing the accessibility of products, sites, and online services, but often, they are incomplete or insufficient. The European Commission has raised concerns regarding the effectiveness of so-called “Accessibility Overlays”—software that supposedly automatically fixes major accessibility errors on websites—highlighting that they may offer only a partial and sometimes counterproductive solution to digital accessibility.
Human-Centered Design
When approaching the design and development of digital products, it is crucial to consider accessibility not as an option to check off at the end of the project but as an integral part of our workflow. Following the principles of Human-Centered Design, people are at the core of the design process of a digital product; solutions must start with them to be successful.
Regarding accessibility by design, at Webranking, we maintain a partnership and open dialogue with Fondazione ASPHI Onlus, a non-profit long committed to advancing the use of digital technologies for the inclusion of people with disabilities or other challenges. Thanks to this valuable collaboration, we can test our designs for accessibility from the early stages of design, continuing with validations through various UX/UI design steps, and then move to checks in a staging environment as the project develops. Testing platforms with accessibility professionals and users with disabilities not only allows us to create products that are accessible by design but also to make significant modifications to platforms of potential clients that present gaps in this aspect.
At the heart of developing a website, integrating accessibility from the early stages of design is a priority. Using semantic HTML, for example, is not only a best practice for SEO but also significantly improves accessibility, allowing screen readers to navigate the site more intuitively. This approach facilitates the interpretation of content, making the site’s structure understandable and navigable for everyone.
Accessible navigation—which includes the use of descriptive titles for pages and alternative texts for images—enhances the user experience, extending the site’s reach to a broader audience. These elements not only improve accessibility but also the overall usability of the site, demonstrating how this integration can enrich the experience for all users.
Attention to color contrast, font choice, and text size ensures that the content is readable and accessible. Moreover, providing visual and accessible feedback for user actions, such as submission confirmations or error alerts, strengthens the site’s comprehensibility and navigability, ensuring that every user can effectively interact with the content.
3 reasons to design for Accessibility
European and Italian legislation on digital accessibility is evolving to include increasingly stringent requirements, reflecting a commitment to digital inclusivity. The regulatory approach, which will extend to a wide range of digital products and services by 2025, underscores the importance of proactive and inclusive web design that anticipates and meets the needs of all users.
If we were to summarize the main reasons why it is important to design accessibly, we would say that beyond the ethical imperative that we are all called to consider—making the right choice for everyone, thereby promoting inclusion also in the digital realm—there is also a significant technical aspect, namely the opportunity to create learning opportunities by embracing new applications and methods, and finally, an economic aspect. Inclusive design consequently leads to the growth of products and services and mitigates potential issues due to current and future legal regulations. With this focus, we pave the way towards a richer and more diverse digital world that welcomes and celebrates the diversity of each user, simultaneously improving the overall browsing experience.
This article was written by Nicole Chinaglia, UX Consultant, and Sara Sanna, Web Development Team Leader.
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