Building accessible experiences at scale: A guide to the EAA and beyond

With the European Accessibility Act taking effect this June, conversations around digital inclusion are heating up — and for good reason. At Contentful, we’ve seen a noticeable uptick in questions about meeting accessibility requirements, especially as teams look to future-proof their digital experiences. 

While the EAA primarily impacts content delivery on the front end, how you organize and manage content on the back end will determine how easy or difficult it is to implement the necessary changes.

In this post, we’ll get you up to speed on what you need to do to comply with the EAA and show you how a platform like Contentful makes it easier to keep up with changing requirements across regions and channels.  

What is the European Accessibility Act, and who does it impact?

The European Accessibility Act requires any business that provides products and services, including websites and mobile apps, to citizens of the European Union to meet accessibility standards for people with disabilities by June 28, 2025. If your company does business in the European Union, you will likely need to meet these accessibility standards.

The act aims to remove barriers for people with disabilities and improve inclusivity. It is similar to the Web Accessibility Directive, the Public Procurement Directive, and the European Electronic Communications Code. Supporters note that accessible design benefits everyone by improving readability, giving people more ways to interact with digital experiences, and creating a more satisfying user experience.

We’ll discuss the added benefits of improving accessibility later, but first, let’s look at the changes you need to make.

What changes do companies need to make?

Most people who ask me about accessibility know they must make changes to comply with the EAA, but they struggle with where to start. Let’s break it down into key areas to consider:

• Front end: The front end is what users see and where they interact with your digital experiences, making it critical to compliance. Your design team will likely be responsible for these changes, which include font, contrast, color palette, etc. 

• Content: You might need to add or change content to improve accessibility. For example, an ecommerce company might add accessibility descriptions to product images to accommodate people who use text-to-speech readers. 

• Content editor: There are two things to consider with your content platform. First, does it meet accessibility standards for your content editors? Second, does the content editor make implementing the necessary frontend changes easy?

Where to start: Steps you can take to comply with the EAA

Improving web accessibility requires changes in how you think about digital experiences and how you deliver them.

Start with empathy: Experience your website like your customers do

Put yourself in your customer’s shoes and test digital experiences from different perspectives. Imagine navigating your website without a mouse (just a keyboard) or depending on a screen reader to understand content in a mobile app. 

Ask yourself:

• Would the experience still make sense?  

• Could someone with low vision read the text easily?

• Could someone easily understand this content using text-to-speech?

• Would a short, simplified version of the content improve the experience?

Use technology: Choose the right tools to audit your site and enforce accessibility standards

Tools like Lighthouse and WAVE can help you perform quick accessibility checks and identify areas for improvement.

Check that your content follows a logical structure:

• Use proper heading levels (H1, H2, H3).

• Write meaningful link text ("Learn about accessibility," instead of "Click here").

• Add descriptive alt text to every image to make sure no key information gets missed.

Once you’ve identified changes, consider how you will enforce new practices moving forward. 

If your content is managed in Contentful, you can build models that require these fields and add validations to help teams stay consistent and compliant.

You can also use AI Actions to integrate accessibility into your workflows.

For example, you can use AI to create alternative versions of your content optimized for screen readers or voice interfaces.

Think long-term: Structure and design with accessibility in mind

Accessibility is not a one-time fix; it’s something you bake into your design process. A design system with accessible components — clear contrast, keyboard-friendly buttons, scalable fonts — will help ensure consistency across your entire site or app. 

Ask yourself:

• Is my color palette readable for people with visual impairments?

• Can all elements be reached and used with a keyboard?

If you’re using a platform like Contentful, you can update your design layer once and apply it across all digital channels without touching your content. 

Not familiar with design systems? Check out this post to learn what a design system is and why you want one.

Set your team up for success: Test, train, and iterate

Writers, designers, and developers all play a role in increasing accessibility and enhancing the user experience. To get the best results, you must shift your mindset from checking the boxes to continuously improving accessibility for better customer experiences.

Guide your team toward long-term success with:

• Accessibility checklists.

• Training on writing clear, inclusive content.

• Best practices for contrast, structure, and interaction.

• A platform like Contentful that meets accessibility standards.

• Clear expectations to:

• Run regular accessibility tests.

• Track what’s been fixed.

• Keep improving as you go.

Approaching accessibility with the right mindset has immediate and long-term benefits

Improving accessibility helps people with disabilities access your website and mobile apps, extending your reach and building trust with a broader audience. Clearer text, better structure, and responsive content improve usability for everyone and can help boost SEO.

In the short term, you can extend the value of accessible content by using it in new experiences like voice assistants, in-store screens, or AI chatbots. 

In the long term, efforts to comply with standards like the EAA encourage you to think about design systems, modular content, and a composable approach to build digital experiences. These things help future-proof your business by making it easier to update and evolve digital experiences. 

The bottom line

The EAA is just the latest compliance act. If complying with the EAA standards is hard or time-consuming, that’s a sign of larger issues. Agility and adaptability are vital to survival in this fast-paced, highly competitive digital world. 

The same features that help Contentful customers reduce the manual work involved in compliance also help them respond faster to other market changes and customer demands.

Could your team use more speed and agility? Chat with a Contentful expert to see what’s possible.

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