Level Access urges shift from EAA compliance to business value
One year after the European Accessibility Act (EAA) came into force, digital accessibility specialist Level Access is calling on organisations to move beyond treating accessibility as a compliance exercise and to recognise it as a driver of commercial outcomes. The EAA took effect on 28 June 2025, requiring consumer-facing digital products and services, spanning e-commerce, banking and other sectors, to meet barrier-free access standards for users with disabilities.
Russell Webb, VP of Europe at Level Access, said: "The organisations that will see the greatest long-term value are those that embed accessibility from the outset. These are the ones that will reach a wider market, reduce the cost and complexity of retrofitting products and services, and deliver impactful digital experiences that work for everyone."
Compliance gap persists at the one-year mark
Level Access's own State of Digital Accessibility Report 2025-2026 suggests the compliance picture remains mixed. Among organisations that said the EAA applied to them, which represented 82% of respondents, fewer than half (44%) reported being fully compliant as of Q3 2025. The company says this pattern points to a wave of reactive, short-term fixes made ahead of the deadline rather than structural integration of accessibility practices into product development workflows.
Webb warned that reactive approaches carry a long tail of risk. Each new application, website, or platform built without accessibility considerations baked in risks introducing fresh barriers that will require expensive retroactive remediation. According to the same report, financial services organisations that have invested in accessibility reported improvements across user experience (94% of respondents), customer satisfaction (93%) and brand reputation (91%), though these figures are self-reported and drawn from Level Access's own customer and prospect base.
Market context and regulatory trajectory
The EAA sits alongside a broader tightening of digital regulation in Europe. The act aligns with obligations under the Web Accessibility Directive, which has applied to public-sector bodies since 2018, and it intersects with the EU AI Act's non-discrimination provisions for AI-driven products. Enforcement responsibility is distributed across member-state market surveillance authorities, and the consistency of that enforcement is still being established. Level Access anticipates that regulatory scrutiny will intensify as authorities move from initial monitoring into active enforcement action.
The digital accessibility market has attracted a growing number of vendors, ranging from automated scanning tools to managed-services providers, reflecting demand from organisations navigating both the EAA and equivalent legislation in the United States (Section 508 and the Americans with Disabilities Act). Level Access positions itself at the higher-capability end of the market, combining AI-assisted scanning with human expert review, though it competes with a range of well-funded platforms offering varying degrees of automation and professional services.
For enterprise software and financial services teams, the practical implication is straightforward. Accessibility requirements are unlikely to diminish, and the cost of embedding standards at the design and development stage is consistently lower than the cost of retrofitting at scale. The anniversary marks a useful inflection point for organisations to audit whether the fixes applied in mid-2025 are durable or whether deeper structural changes to their digital delivery processes are needed.
Level Access did not announce a product launch or commercial deal alongside this release. The company's commentary is positioned as a market awareness initiative tied to the EAA's first anniversary.