Digital Trust Index 2024 The State of Digital Accessibility in Europe

• Over 260,000 European websites were tested for accessibility issues. For Belgium, 7,408 pages were assessed.

• All tested countries score badly. Norway, Finland and Sweden score best, while Czechia, Romania and Hungary close ranks. Belgium ranks seventh, in the middle of the pack.

• The most common issues are insufficient colour contrast and a lack of descriptive text for images, links, and buttons. These problems pose significant obstacles. Yet, they are relatively easy to fix.

• One year from now (June 28th, 2025) the European Accessibility Act enforces accessibility requirements for essential products and services. European countries are clearly not ready for this. Companies and organisations may be fined if they don’t comply.

• The Digital Trust Index 2024 is an annual research initiative conducted by the digital advisory firm Craftzing to measure the trustworthiness of digital platforms. Each quarter, the index focuses on one trust aspect. This edition focuses on accessibility. It’s the first time a research has been conducted on a sample of European websites this large.

2. Impact Digital trust is about everyone participating in our digital society

Technology is permeating every part of our society. From making a doctor’s appointment and ordering food, to using e-gyms, banking, or meeting new people and engaging with culture and entertainment. Digital solutions are becoming increasingly essential. They offer efficiency and improvements for both companies and users. But not all users benefit equally.

Not everyone is able to quickly adopt new applications and keep track of a multitude of digital services. Is an application easy to use and understand? Does it add value? And is it built with accessibility in mind, not excluding anyone?

Over 100 million Europeans ^[1], one in four adults, have some form of disability. Mobility, visual, hearing, cognitive, and other impairments, whether permanent or temporary, are common.

If we want people to fully trust a digital society, we need to make sure that our digital products and services are accessible and trustworthy. Europe is contributing to this effort with the European Accessibility Act ^[2]. This act mandates that companies and organisations providing essential digital services and products meet accessibility requirements by June 28th, 2025.

3. Results Europe is not ready

So we wondered: how is Europe doing so far, with the Accessibility Act becoming a reality one year from now?

According to our research, European companies and organisations are far from ready. We tested 260,000 homepages of European websites using an automated tool that validates these websites against a sub-set of WCAG requirements. 94% of all tested websites fail at least one of our tests, one in four fail more than three.

When ranking the data on the percentage of a country’s dataset that fails at least one test, Nordic countries slightly outperform the rest of Europe. However, no country has an acceptable level of websites free from accessibility issues.

Automated tests are limited. About a third of accessibility requirements can be tested this way, and not all tests give conclusive results for every page. Our results don’t reflect a website’s true compliancy with accessibility requirements, but do show real accessibility issues that have to be fixed in order to become compliant.

We’ve ran a total of 16 million tests on our dataset of homepages, of which 6.4 million returned conclusive results: fail or pass. One in eight conclusive tests failed.

4. Common issues The spotlight on common accessibility hurdles

Every country in our dataset returned the same list of most failed tests. All of these pose real obstacles to a wide range of users, with or without disabilities. Most of them, however, are relatively easy to fix by people that have knowledge of accessibility. All of them can be prevented by building products and services with digital inclusion in mind.

Colour contrastLow contrast text

This rule checks for elements with insufficient colour contrast. Colours that are close together results in a lower contrast, making content harder to read. The threshold for (easily) readable text depends on a person’s eye sight, colour perception, etc. External factors, like bright sunlight, also influence readability. WCAG calculates this contrast as a ratio and defines minima for websites to meet. Readable content is a basic requirement for accessible websites, but also the most failed test according to our research.

Link nameMissing discernible text for links

This rule checks that each link has an accessible name that can be read by assistive technology like screen readers. For example, when a link only contains an icon and has no name that can be programmatically determined, it lacks discernible text. It’s important for links to have an accessible name and clearly state their purpose.

Image altMissing alternative text for images

This rule checks that images either have an accessible name or are marked up as decorative. People who cannot see an image can have the text alternative read aloud using synthesized speech. Alt-texts are crucial for people with visual impairments.

Button nameMissing discernible text for buttons

This rule is identical to ‘missing discernible text for links’ but applied to buttons.

Page languageMissing document language

This rule checks that an HTML page has a lang attribute. It defines the language of the page and helps people using assistive technology like screen readers to get information read out in the correct language.

Distinguishable linksIndistinguishable links in text blocks

This rule looks at common ways to distinguish links from surrounding text, such as underlining. If the link only differs in colour from the surrounding text, it must have a contrast difference of at least 3:1. This ensures low vision users and users with a colour vision deficiency can easily distinguish links in blocks of text.

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5. Methodology About the research

The Digital Trust Index 2024 is an annual research initiative conducted by the digital advisory firm Craftzing to measure the trustworthiness of digital platforms. Each quarter, the index focuses on one trust aspect. This edition focuses on accessibility.

From our experience optimising digital services and testing them with users, we are daily confronted with barriers that people encounter because digital services are not well designed and do not meet accessibility requirements.

How we tested

To get an overview of Europe's accessibility problem, we needed to test hundreds of thousands of websites. This cannot be done manually, so we looked for an automated solution. We were inspired by the WebAIM Million project ^[3].

The list of domain names comes from the Tranco list ^[4], a research-oriented ranking for top sites. We extracted country codes and categorised the results per European country. With testing and scraping tools we have built a research application that can test thousands of homepages of EU websites with Deque's axe API ^[5]. Axe’s rules are mapped on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) version 2.1, level A and AA, from which the European standard EN 301 549 draws heavily.

Why are some EU countries not in the list? Because we had fewer than 4,000 websites from these countries in our sample to test, which would result in significant differences compared to other countries, making it difficult to compare the results across EU countries.

6. The path forward You shouldn't just consider accessibility; you should start with it.

One in four European adults has some form of disability. For many, participating in the digital society is challenging. Most organizations are unaware of this and are missing out on potential revenue and impact. Imagine the growth that can be achieved by developing digital services for everyone.

Today, accessibility is often an afterthought, something considered at the end of a digital project. That’s not the right approach. It will require significant rework and budget to fix. You shouldn't just consider accessibility; you should start with it.

Organisations that create an environment that stimulates inclusion have higher digital trust and avoid legal risks. Including accessibility at the start of your processes minimises effort and maximises outcome.

Craftzing believes that companies should be fined when their digital services are not accessible. Read the opinion of our CEO Roeland Tegenbos in Belgian newspaper De Tijd. Since no one likes to be fined, this should encourage the right action: building a digital society where everyone can participate.

Embrace the European Accessibility Act as an opportunity to enhance user experience and expand your reach. Let's build a more accessible future.

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7. References Resources