Web Accessibility Directive Five Years of Lessons and Inspiration with IAAP and EDF

Setting the Scene: What Has Changed

June Lowery-Kingston from the European Commission opened with a look back at what five years of implementation have delivered:

• Public sector sites are cleaner and better structured; basic accessibility errors are rarer.
• Accessibility testing increasingly involves people with disabilities, giving results more credibility.
• The market for accessibility services has matured, and new EU laws — from the European Accessibility Act to the Digital Services Act — are extending the impact.

Still, challenges remain: shortages of trained professionals, inconsistent monitoring, and underused feedback mechanisms. June closed with a personal reminder that accessibility affects everyone, sharing how an inclusive health app helped her family during a hospital stay:

“Design, develop, and deploy inclusively — because one day, you or your loved ones might depend on it.”

From Rights to Practice

Catherine Naughton, Executive Director of EDF, stressed that accessibility is a human rights issue, not a technical one.
While the WAD raised awareness and improved many services, she noted persistent gaps: missing accessibility statements, weak feedback channels, and limited user involvement — especially at local level.

EDF continues to call for:

• An EU Accessibility Agency to coordinate enforcement and expertise.
• Accessibility and universal design to be part of all higher education curricula.
• Stronger protection against “quick-fix” overlays, which she called a false solution to a real problem. (See the joint EDF and IAAP statement on accessibility overlays for more details)

“Every WAD anniversary is a reminder of how far we’ve come — and how much further we must go.”

National and Institutional Examples

The first session, featuring representatives from Denmark, Germany, and the European Parliament, showcased what implementation looks like on the ground.

Denmark treats monitoring as collaboration. Agencies receive test results, screenshots, and “sparring sessions” to interpret findings — but names are published if they don’t act. Transparency is the main enforcement tool.

Germany’s Federal Employment Agency built a Usability & Accessibility Center that supports teams from the start, shifting accessibility “left” in the process and testing with employees with disabilities.

The European Parliament turned early awareness-raising into an internal Competence Centre for Digital Accessibility, supported by leadership and a network of trained officers.

Across these examples, the lesson was clear: dialogue, coaching, and leadership commitment achieve more than post-launch testing.

Updating Standards: EN 301 549 and Beyond WCAG

In the one of the most energizing sessions of the conference, Shadi Abou-Zahra gave an update on EN 301 549 v4.1.1, the standard behind the WAD and soon the EAA. The new version:

• moves from WCAG 2.1 to WCAG 2.2 for web and aligns non-web content via WCAG2ICT,
• restructures and cleans up text (especially open vs closed functionality), and pulls preconditions into the requirements instead of annexes,
• strengthens authoring tool requirements (now general, not just web), and improves provisions for real-time communication, emergency comms and hardware/built environment.
  If all goes well, it could apply under both WAD and EAA from mid-next year.

Aislinn Conway explained that Ireland’s NDA monitors with automated and in-depth reviews, but does not test EN 301 549 clauses that go beyond WCAG where no agreed testing method exists (e.g. user preferences). Inventing a purely national interpretation would undermine harmonisation, so they are waiting for clearer methods in the new standard and community guidance.

Malin Hammarberg described IAAP’s EN-Beyond workshops  — the latest of which took place a day before the anniversary conference — where agencies, experts and end users deep-dive one “beyond WCAG” requirement at a time. They’ve found big differences in interpretation across Member States, meaning the same clause can pass in one country and fail in another. The workshops aim to create open, practical guidance to support the standard, and some results have already influenced the new EN 301 549. All speakers agreed on three needs: clearer language, accessible standard format (no more PDFs, use HTML instead), and more open, multi-stakeholder development with people with disabilities at the table.

From Users’ Perspective: Everyday Accessibility

End users from Slovenia, Sweden, and Ireland reminded attendees that accessibility is lived experience:

• Agnes, with cerebral palsy, called for larger, high-contrast text, cleaner layouts, and forms without time limits.
• Jonathan, who is hard of hearing, highlighted the need for quality captions (subtitles) and tools that support hearing aids.
• Lydia, with an intellectual disability, asked for simple language, stable interfaces, and human feedback channels.

Their shared message: make it easy, consistent, and human, and always co-create with real users before launch.

Procurement: From Checklists to Change

The session on accessible public procurement explored how EU guidance and real-world practices can turn accessibility from a checkbox into lasting change.

Peter Kemeny (European Commission, DG GROW) introduced the revised EU technical report TR 101 551, designed to help public buyers integrate accessibility throughout the entire procurement cycle — from planning and specifications to award criteria and contract management.

Christian Aaberg (Agency for Public Management and eGovernment, Norway) warned that many tenders still rely on vague “WCAG compliant?” yes/no checkboxes, which do little to ensure real accessibility.

Jessica Bogner (Deque Systems) added the supplier’s perspective: buyers often lack clear accessibility ownership, include unrealistic requirements, or fail to plan for ongoing compliance after launch.

Speakers agreed on several key solutions:

• Define clear accessibility responsibilities between buyers and suppliers.
• Use award criteria that reward quality, not price alone.
• Engage accessibility experts early and maintain compliance beyond delivery.

Hot Topics: AI, Automated Testing, and the Future

From the Netherlands to India, innovators showed how technology is reshaping accessibility testing.

• As Hidde de Vries from the Dutch government noted, the upcoming WCAG-EM 2.0 seeks to make accessibility evaluations clearer, more consistent, and easier to apply in practice.
• Shilpi Kapoor noted that AI can help scale testing and captioning, but experts warned against replacing humans entirely – human review will always be essential.
• Wilco Fiers from Deque Systems show promise for guiding developers to fix code in real time — but only when trained on accessible examples.

As Shilpi Kapoor put it:

“Future accessibility will rely on tech-plus-human collaboration — not automation alone.”

Building Culture: Leadership, Training, and Motivation

Inspiration came from across sectors:

• Siteimprove’s Christina Adams described how AI “agents” could empower accessibility teams by linking compliance data to business performance.
• Belgium’s ETNIC proved that gamified staff training and inclusive hiring drive long-term change.
• Spain’s Breixo Pastoriza stressed co-creation and training as pillars for a digital decade that “includes everyone.”
• Microsoft’s Hector Minto reminded that accessibility becomes real only when everyone owns it — from developers to managers.

Their collective message: progress happens when people, not just policies, lead inclusion.

EDF & IAAP: The Policy–Practice Partnership

EDF’s Daniel Casas outlined priorities for the next phase of the European Disability Strategy: a European Accessibility Agency, a single market for assistive technologies, and better portability of disability rights across borders.

IAAP’s Susanna Laurin reported steady growth, with more than 10,000 certified professionals worldwide, and new partnerships to embed accessibility into higher education and assistive technology research. We’re proud that our own accessibility specialists Indre Karlove (WAS) and Lina Balciunaite (CPACC) are among them.

Together, EDF and IAAP pledged to align policy with practice: combining advocacy, expertise, and lived experience to accelerate progress across Europe.

Looking Ahead

Five years in, the Web Accessibility Directive has already transformed Europe’s digital landscape, but the next step is cultural. Accessibility must become standard practice, not special effort.

“To build an inclusive digital decade, we must combine regulation with expertise — and policy with people.”

You can watch all event recordings on the IAAP YouTube channel.