As of June 28, 2025, digital accessibility requirements also apply to private companies, and in 2026, the regulations entered the phase where they are actually enforced: the guidelines are final, the reporting platform is active, and inspections have begun.
Many business owners are now discovering that they are subject to this requirement, and their first reaction boils down to a single question: how much work will it entail?
The answer depends on the current state of the website. Some companies are already halfway there without even realizing it; others have a longer road ahead of them. In either case, the starting point is the same, and it’s outlined below.
A website is accessible when anyone—including people with visual, hearing, mobility, or cognitive disabilities—can perceive its content, understand it, navigate through its sections, and interact with its features.
The technical standard is the WCAG, the W3C’s international guidelines, which are organized into three levels of compliance: A, AA, and AAA. European regulations require Level AA.
In practice, this means that an image includes a text description that can be read by a screen reader, that the contrast between text and background remains sufficient even for people with low vision, that every function accessible via the mouse is also accessible via the keyboard, and that a video offers captions.
These requirements apply to a broader audience than the term “disability” might suggest. An accessible website also benefits older adults, people browsing on an older smartphone, those with a slow internet connection, and those viewing the site in a noisy environment, where captions become the only way to follow a video.
Digital accessibility in Italy is based on two coexisting standards.
The 2004 Stanca Act established requirements for the public sector and subsequently extended them to large private companies.
Legislative Decree No. 82 of May 27, 2022, which transposes the European directive, has expanded the scope to cover a large part of the private market: its provisions take effect on June 28, 2025.
This requirement applies to any entity that offers digital products or services to consumers and exceeds at least one of these two thresholds: ten employees or two million euros in annual revenue. The criteria are alternative, so meeting just one is sufficient.
The decree lists the sectors covered: e-commerce, banking services, passenger transportation, electronic communications, e-books, and self-service terminals.
Micro-enterprises that provide services—that is, those with fewer than ten employees and an annual revenue of no more than two million—are exempt from this requirement.
These two conditions must be met together: meeting just one of them brings the company within the scope of the regulation.
Companies that develop websites, portals, or applications on behalf of public agencies follow their own process, with specific requirements and deadlines. This topic is covered in more detail on the page dedicated to the accessibility of public administration websites →
Until 2025, digital accessibility remained largely a regulation on paper. In 2026, the framework was finalized on three fronts.
The guidelines issuedby the Agency for Digital Italy were definitively adopted in March 2026 by Resolution No. 38/2026, and provide technical and operational instructions for complying with the decree.
Mandatory compliance remains set at Levels A and AA of WCAG 2.1. As of March 11, 2026, the platform through which consumers can report a website with accessibility barriers is also operational. And during the Accessibility Days in May 2026, the Agency’s leadership designated 2026 as the “Year of Audits.”
The guidelines address the issue of disproportionate burden—the provision that allows for the postponement of an intervention when the costs are objectively excessive relative to the size of the business.
Those who use it must document the assessment, retain it for five years, and update it at least once a year, as well as whenever the service changes.
A new chapter addresses the privacy of people with disabilities.
The guidelines call for checking cookies, fingerprinting techniques, and accessibility widgets, because some of these tools detect which assistive technology a visitor is using—information that can be used to infer a health condition.
The accessibility statement must explicitly state that the website is free of such tracking techniques.
With regard to penalties, the decree provides for administrative fines ranging from 5,000 to 40,000 euros for violations of the requirements; for very large companies with an average annual revenue exceeding 500 million, the Stanca Law imposes fines of up to 5 percent of revenue.
The sanctions follow a process that begins with a report and allows room for intervention.
The details of the European directive that triggered all of this are outlined on the page dedicated to the European Accessibility Act →.
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines organize the requirements around four principles: content must be perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust.
All content reaches users through multiple channels. Images include alternative text, videos have captions, and the contrast ratio between text and background is at least 4.5 to 1 for normal text.
All functions remain accessible via the keyboard; users have the time they need to complete an action; and the navigation structure remains consistent throughout every section of the site.
The page’s language is specified in the code, the error messages from the forms explain how to correct the issue, and the page’s behavior remains predictable.
The code complies with standards, ensuring that browsers and assistive technologies interpret it reliably. This is the principle that links accessibility to a website’s technical quality, and the reason why an accessible website is often stronger from an SEO perspective as well: a clean semantic structure, a consistent heading hierarchy, and alt text provided.
Accessibility widgets allow visitors to adjust certain display preferences and help them monitor the status of a website.
Compliance, however, stems from correcting the code at the source: the 2026 AgID Guidelines recommend reserving these tools for specific cases, and the European Commission has indicated that correction at the source is the way to meet the EN 301 549 standard.
It’s important to understand this distinction before signing a contract. There are offers on the market that present the installation of a script as a complete solution: the site remains unchanged beneath the surface, and the barriers stay where they are.
The European Disability Forum and IAAP have issued a joint statement on this issue, and AgID has clarified that the remediation requires human intervention.
Our approach combines both of these elements. We are an authorized UserWay partner—one of the world’s most widely used platforms for digital accessibility management—and we use it for what it does best:
Next, we make changes to the code. On 90 percent of the websites we’ve worked on, we achieved compliance by correcting the HTML that was causing the barrier right at the source.
This way, the technology does what it’s designed to do, the correction remains structural, and the site remains free of the tracking techniques that the guidelines call for caution regarding.
Accessibility and usability address two different questions that lead in the same direction.
Accessibility refers to whether everyone can use the site. Usability refers to how easy and enjoyable it is to use.
A contact form with clear labels, a logical order of fields, and understandable error messages benefits everyone: it helps users who navigate with a screen reader and, at the same time, reduces abandonment rates for everyone else.
That is why an accessibility improvement almost always results in a measurable increase in conversion rates.
This topic is explored in greater depth on the page dedicated to the article: Website user experience →
The process consists of four stages.
We combine automated tools, manual checks, and testing with assistive technologies.
The automated scan runs on the UserWay platform and returns a comprehensive map of the findings.
Automated tools detect about one-third of the barriers; the rest only become apparent when you actually try to complete a path using a screen reader or just the keyboard.
The issues identified are ranked by severity and by their impact on the key pathways: purchase, contact request, and access to the members-only area.
We start there, so results come quickly even when the full plan takes time to implement.
We make changes to the code, design, and content.
We make corrections to the HTML that causes the accessibility barrier, ensuring the results remain consistent even when switching tools or themes.
Some corrections are structural and relate to the site’s theme; others concern published content and are ongoing, which is why we train the company staff responsible for updating the site.
We draft the accessibility statement and set up periodic checks, because every new page published can introduce a barrier. Continuous monitoring remains active on the platform, with periodic reports flagging new issues as soon as they arise.
Those who prefer to start with a comprehensive technical overview can begin with a technical analysis of the site →
Those who prefer to start with an overall technical overview can begin with a technical analysis of the site →
Making a website accessible means addressing different needs with specific solutions. People who are blind or visually impaired use screen readers and need alternative text for images, adequate contrast, and a well-organized semantic structure.
People with mobility impairments often navigate using only the keyboard and need commands that can be accessed without a mouse.
People with hearing impairments benefit from captions and transcripts, while those with cognitive challenges appreciate clear language and straightforward processes.
Designing to accommodate this variety of needs broadens the audience your site can reach and makes the experience more robust for every visitor. An accessible website welcomes everyone.
The accessibility statement is the public document through which an organization discloses the accessibility status of its website or app.
It indicates the level of compliance achieved, lists the content that still needs to be updated along with the reasons why, and provides a feedback channel for users.
It is prepared using the template provided by the Agency for Digital Italy and is updated annually.
For the public sector, this requirement has been in place for years. For private entities covered by the decree, the declaration will become mandatory starting in September 2025, with annual updates.
One point deserves attention: the declaration describes the actual condition of the site. Claiming a higher level of compliance than is actually the case exposes one to a twofold risk—both formal and reputational.
It is therefore advisable for the report to be issued after the audit and to describe precisely what still needs to be done.
Starting in 2026, it will also include a statement confirming the absence of tracking techniques that could be used to infer a disability.
The cost of making accessibility modifications depends on five factors:
A preliminary assessment makes it possible to determine the scope of the project before beginning.
Two examples illustrate the difference between the two cases.
That is why the inspection always comes before the estimate.
Who is designing a new website is in the best position: building an accessible site from the start costs a fraction of what it costs to fix it later, and this applies even during the website development phase.
Digital menus, online reservations, and product descriptions accessible to every customer.
Catalogs and product sheets that maintain the brand’s aesthetic appeal while ensuring full usability.
Booking engines and property descriptions available to all guests, including information on physical accessibility.
Compliant digital services and restricted-access areas, in industries where compliance is integral to reputation.
Accessibility involves code, design, and content all at once. When these three components are handled by different vendors, fixes become a never-ending cycle: the theme is fixed, but new content reintroduces the same barriers.
At Factory Communication, accessibility is an integral part of our work on the website.
We develop and maintain our clients’ websites, so compliance is built into the publishing process and remains part of it.
Those who update the website receive the necessary training, because an accessible website is an ongoing practice rather than a one-time goal.
UserWay’s authorized partner status adds a world-class platform for continuous scanning and monitoring to this work, while the fixes remain where they produce consistent results: in the website’s code.
The same logic applies to maintenance: the support and maintenance of WordPress sites includes periodic checks of accessibility.
We improved the accessibility of 10 websites belonging to the Heineken Italia group —including Birra Moretti, Birra Messina, Birra Dreher, and Birra Ichnusa —helping them achieve WCAG Level AA compliance, the standard required by European regulations.
The project combined continuous scanning on the UserWay platform—of which we are an authorized partner—with corrective actions to the code and content that ensured compliance.
Each site had its own strong and recognizable visual identity: some traditional color combinations fell short of the required contrast threshold, and the solution was found by adjusting the text colors while retaining the institutional colors in the decorative elements.
Working on well-known brands and multiple websites simultaneously has allowed us to establish a replicable method that can be applied to organizations of all sizes seeking to achieve compliance within predictable timeframes and at predictable costs.
A website is considered accessible when anyone—including people with visual, hearing, mobility, or cognitive disabilities—can perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with its content. The technical standard is the WCAG, which has three levels: A, AA, and AAA. European regulations require Level AA.
The requirement applies to businesses that offer digital products or services to consumers and exceed at least one of the following thresholds: ten employees or two million euros in annual revenue. Micro-enterprises that provide services—that is, those with fewer than ten employees and whose combined revenue does not exceed two million euros—are exempt. The provisions take effect on June 28, 2025.
A widget offers visitors certain display options and helps monitor the site’s status. Compliance, however, stems from correcting the source code: the 2026 AgID Guidelines reserve these tools for specific interventions and require verification that they respect the privacy of people with disabilities. The path to achieving this result lies in HTML.
Legislative Decree 82/2022 provides for administrative penalties ranging from 5,000 to 40,000 euros for violations of accessibility requirements. For companies with an average annual revenue exceeding 500 million euros, the Stanca Law imposes a penalty of up to 5 percent of revenue. The process begins with a report and sets a deadline for corrective action.
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines are the W3C’s international guidelines, organized into three levels: A as the baseline, AA as the standard required by Italian and European regulations, and AAA as the level of excellence. The AgID Guidelines adopted in 2026 establish mandatory compliance with levels A and AA of WCAG 2.1.
Accessibility refers to the ability of all people, including those with disabilities, to use the website. Usability refers to how easy and enjoyable it is for anyone to use the website. The two aspects reinforce each other: an accessible website is almost always more usable as well.
The audit combines three approaches: automated tools, which detect about one-third of the barriers; manual reviews of the code and content; and testing with assistive technologies such as screen readers. The result is a list of issues classified by severity, with a reference to the corresponding WCAG criterion.
Yes, indirectly. An accessible website has a correct semantic structure, a consistent heading hierarchy, alt text for images, and clear navigation—elements that search engines interpret as quality signals. Accessibility and technical SEO share many of the same best practices.
In addition to people with visual, hearing, mobility, or cognitive disabilities, an accessible website improves the experience for older adults, those using slow internet connections or outdated devices, and those accessing the site under challenging conditions. It is estimated that people with disabilities account for about 15 percent of the world’s population.
Finding out where your website stands takes just a few hours of analysis and completely changes the picture: some discover they’re almost compliant, while others find they need to map out a plan. In both cases, you make decisions based on the data.
Let’s discuss this together: we’ll review your website, tell you where it stands in relation to the requirements, and identify which actions are a priority.
