Digital accessibility: a practical guide

Digital accessibility is about the possibility of understanding and using a product or a service in different conditions of use. An evaluation should examine the path, the barriers and the interventions needed, not only run an automated check.

Why it is fundamental to the success of your digital product or service.

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The web and the internet now play an important role in many aspects of our lives: they allow us to learn online, shop, pay bills, book medical appointments and much else. The internet belongs to everyone, but not everyone has the possibility of accessing it in the same way. It is important that these services, tied to the digital world, are accessible to everyone, without exception.

People with disabilities often meet difficulties in accessing information on the web because of technical barriers and design that is not inclusive.

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What is accessibility?

Accessibility is the characteristic of a product, a service or an environment of being usable by any kind of person without difficulty, regardless of their level of competence, experience or ability. In this sense, the subject is strongly felt when it is tied to disability: the need is to offer equal opportunities of access to products and services regardless of the type of impairment of the person using them.

Making the digital service or product accessible, guaranteeing the same rights and possibilities for everyone, becomes one of the main aims in designing a successful user experience.

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Making the digital service or product accessible, guaranteeing the same rights and possibilities for everyone, becomes one of the main aims in designing a successful user experience.

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Why does digital accessibility matter?

By digital accessibility we mean the ability of information systems to make a website accessible, through particular configurations and software, and therefore to allow optimal use for any kind of person.

As the father of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, put it, “The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect”: that is why, when you approach the building of a website, you need to ask whether it will be usable in the same way for every kind of person. This means considering carefully a series of parameters such as the intended audience, people’s experience, their needs and their level of disability.

Digital accessibility helps to break down virtual barriers, by adopting measures in the design phase that raise the quality of the website considerably and widen the audience it can reach.

Accessibility also means widening the audience of your website, and therefore an opportunity for growth for digital products and services.

Here are some good practices to adopt when you design an accessible digital product or service:

• Increase the site’s ability to adapt automatically to the resolution of the different devices available;
• Allow navigation so that content can be perceived through different sensory channels;
• Provide descriptive titles for every page available online, to allow quick access to the sections of greatest interest;
• Use colour adequately, both in how colours are combined and in contrast;
• Guarantee the right size and the correct type of font, so as not to tire the eyes during reading and to allow the text to be enlarged without altering the content and the structure;
• Always pair images with alternative text;
• Enable navigation also with the keyboard or with screen readers.

From these points it is clear that a website or, in general, digital products and services built by following these design steps can guarantee benefits for everyone: for anyone, an accessible web page is easier to read, to download and to navigate.

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What are the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)?

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) define the specific rules for making web content accessible to people with disabilities. Although they provide solutions to problems of different kinds, they are not always conclusive for certain disabilities or combinations of them.

WCAG 2.1 were developed in collaboration with organisations and governments with the aim of providing a shared standard for web accessibility that meets the needs of individuals at an international level. They apply widely to different types of content, both today and in the future, and can be assessed through a series of automated tests or human evaluations.

Defining this kind of “rule” with precision involves a series of difficulties, such as tight timescales, the recognition of the validity of the tests at international level, and the worldwide implementation of the same principles: this is, in any case, work that is continually being updated in this area, with new versions of the WCAG under development.

The audience of people who use and take an interest in the WCAG is rather vast and varied, and for this reason, to meet the different needs of this public, several levels of guidance are made available, including for example the global principles of web accessibility.

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The four principles of digital accessibility

The guidelines on digital accessibility turn around four fundamental principles, which lay the foundations needed for anyone to be able to access and use web content.

An information product is accessible if it is:

• Perceivable, “that is, information and user interface components must be presentable to users in ways they can perceive”. For example, if the content is a video, for it to be perceivable also by people with hearing disabilities, captions must be present;
• Operable, that is, the possibility for a person to use all the components and the navigation of the user interface;
• Understandable, that is, information and the operation of the user interface must be understandable;
• Robust, web content must be robust, that is, “it must be robust enough that it can be interpreted reliably by a wide variety of user agents, including assistive technologies.”

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The rules on digital accessibility in Italy

Italy was one of the first countries to adopt the European guidelines on digital accessibility.

In particular, the Stanca Law, issued on 9 January 2004, establishes the “provisions to favour access by disabled people to digital tools” and requires Regions and local authorities to respect accessibility requirements for all digital goods and services.

The addressees of the Stanca Law must therefore:

• Build websites and applications that conform to the guidelines issued on accessibility by the Agency for Digital Italy (AgID);
• Provide and update periodically a detailed, thorough and clear accessibility statement on the conformance of their websites and mobile applications with Law no. 4 of 2004;
• Make available to an employee with a disability the hardware and software and the assistive technology adequate to the specific disability.

This law established the obligations relating to the accessibility of the information and online services of the public administration and of all services of public utility. Later, with the decree-law of 16 July 2020, large companies were also introduced among the addressees of these obligations.

The Stanca Law also applies to private parties other than those already covered, that offer services to the public through websites or mobile applications and whose average turnover, over the last three years of activity, exceeds five hundred million euros. For these parties, sites and apps had to be brought into line with accessibility requirements by 5 November 2022; the obligation remains in force. It should be distinguished from the scope of the European Accessibility Act (EAA), Directive (EU) 2019/882, implemented by Legislative Decree 82/2022, which since 28 June 2025 covers specific products and services and not every company website.

The perimeter of the applicable obligations must be assessed in the concrete case with the competent functions. This guide describes an approach to design and to verification and does not replace that assessment.

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Questions on digital accessibility

Is an automated check enough to assess accessibility?

No. The verification should be defined around the product and around people’s activities, combining tools with manual checks and, where planned, tests with assistive technologies and relevant users.

How do you move from the evaluation to the interventions?

The barriers observed, their context and the priorities are documented. The corrections must have a person responsible and a later verification, distinct from the simple delivery of a report.

Define an accessibility evaluation with us

Define an accessibility evaluation with us. Describe the product, the paths to be examined and the context of use. Design work is not equivalent to a certification or a legal opinion.