Laws don't guarantee web accessibility, people do.
Accessibility legislation is becoming stronger across the world: organizations are investing in training, accessibility policies are becoming more common and enforcement is increasing through regulations such as the EAA.
Yet if legislation and training were enough, wouldn't we expect most websites to be accessible by now? The evidence suggests otherwise.
➡️ Researchers from the University of Cambridge found that the biggest barriers to accessibility are often organizational rather than technical. Teams generally understand what should be done, but accessibility is frequently deprioritized because of deadlines, competing business objectives or a lack of leadership commitment.
➡️ Researchers from Microsoft Research and the University of Washington reached a similar conclusion. Developers don't simply need more guidance - they need accessibility to become part of their everyday workflow. If accessibility is only reviewed at the end of a project, many barriers are already built into the product.
➡️ The annual WebAIM Million report tells the same story from another perspective. Despite years of legislation, growing awareness and thousands of training courses, around 96% of the world's one million most visited homepages still contain automatically detectable accessibility errors.
In other words, regulations, training and enforcement create the conditions for accessibility, but they do not guarantee it.
Let's take a look at two different organizations:
1. One has mandatory accessibility training, detailed internal policies and regular compliance meetings. Yet new releases still introduce inaccessible forms, missing focus indicators and dialogs that cannot be operated using only a keyboard.
2. The other has a much smaller budget and no dedicated accessibility department. However, designers routinely check colour contrast before handing over designs. Developers test every feature using only a keyboard before opening a pull request. Testers verify the user journey with a screen reader. Product managers treat accessibility issues with the same priority as functional defects.
Which team is more likely to build an accessible product?
Laws establish expectations, training builds knowledge, enforcement creates accountability, but accessibility ultimately depends on hundreds of decisions made every day by designers, developers and leaders. When accessibility becomes part of an organization's culture rather than a compliance exercise, better products naturally follow.
In your experience, what has made the biggest difference: stronger legislation, better education, leadership commitment, or people who genuinely care enough to make accessibility part of their daily work?
