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What impact will the new Accessibility Legislation have on design?
Taking effect in June 2025, the European Accessibility Act will require businesses operating in the EU to ensure their digital products and services are accessible to everyone, especially people with disabilities. From that point forward, every digital interface must be designed to be navigable and usable by everyone. This is a fundamental shift that will directly impact how designers and developers approach their work.
Measuring Accessibility
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1, and soon WCAG 2.2, at Level AA remain the primary standard for digital accessibility. However, businesses must also consider EN 301 549, which sets accessibility requirements for software, hardware, and ICT products. While development teams will bear much of the responsibility for technical compliance, designers play a crucial role in ensuring interfaces are built with accessibility in mind from the outset, as UX and UI design play a critical role in ensuring interfaces and processes are understandable and usable.
At 383, we’ve developed an accessibility checklist, rooted in WCAG principles, to guide our design audits and ensure compliance across all the products we design. While full AAA compliance is often impractical, requiring for example sign language interpretation for all multimedia, there are meaningful steps that go beyond AA standards without adding excessive complexity. Simple interventions, like allowing users to adjust text size and contrast settings or ensuring clear focus states for interactive elements, can dramatically improve accessibility without overburdening teams.
Because accessibility is a shared responsibility, we’ve also created a 383 foundation, a set of agreed-upon minimum standards that extend beyond legal requirements and focus on low-to-medium effort changes that can create a significant impact.
Key Areas of Focus
Content & Language
Clear, accessible content is a fundamental requirement. This includes using simple language, offering clear instructions (and expectations for what is about to happen), and providing support for users with different needs, such as pronunciation guides, sign language options, and adaptable reading levels. Features like glossaries, spell checking, and tooltips can further aid comprehension. Multimedia elements should also include clear and visible user controls to ensure they can be paused, replayed or adjusted as needed. We’re also huge advocates for generally simplifying language wherever possible. One thing we see a lot of are companies in specific industries using proprietary terms and not understanding that their consumers and users lack their internal context, so ensuring that the core language is understandable by as broad an audience as possible, clear and to the point is critical.
User Experience & Interaction Design
Accessibility isn’t just about compliance, as mentioned above it’s about designing intuitive and flexible experiences that work for everyone and allow for failure. A well-designed interface should support users with visual, motor, cognitive, and auditory impairments, embedding inclusive principles into every interaction.
Keyboard Accessibility & Logical Navigation
Many users rely on keyboards, screen readers, or switch devices instead of a mouse. Ensuring a logical tab order allows smooth navigation, while visible focus indicators help users track their position. Skip links provide shortcuts past repetitive navigation, making content more accessible and efficient to use.
Flexible Input & Assistive Technology Support
Users interact with digital products in different ways, from touchscreens to voice commands and eye-tracking. Interfaces should support multiple input methods rather than relying on a single interaction style. Large touch targets improve accuracy for users with motor impairments, while adjustable interaction speeds accommodate different needs.
Error Prevention & Recovery
Clear, actionable error messages prevent frustration. Instead of vague alerts, interfaces should explain what went wrong and how to fix it. Real-time form validation helps users correct mistakes early, while undo options and confirmation steps reduce the risk of irreversible errors.
Readability & Cognitive Load
Simple, clear language benefits everyone, particularly users with cognitive impairments or reading difficulties. Breaking up long text, using tooltips or icons, and reducing distractions make content easier to process. A well-structured interface removes unnecessary complexity, improving comprehension.
Consistency & Predictability
A predictable interface builds confidence. Navigation should stay consistent across pages, and buttons or links should behave as expected. Using semantic HTML and ARIA landmarks ensures assistive technologies interpret content correctly, making interactions smoother for all users.
Visual Design & Components
A design system built with accessibility in mind helps create compliant interfaces. Ensuring contrast ratios, appropriate font sizes, and various input states will make meeting accessibility standards much easier. However, even the most well-crafted design system doesn’t guarantee an accessible experience; how components are used and populated matters just as much.
Why This Matters
Integrating accessibility into UX from the start creates better experiences for everyone. By reducing friction and prioritising usability, we design products that are not just compliant but truly inclusive. Accessibility isn’t an extra step, it’s a fundamental part of great design.
How This Will Change the Design Process
Shift-Left Accessibility
Accessibility must be integrated from the start of the design process rather than being treated as a compliance checkbox at the end. This means considering accessibility requirements at the wireframing stage and making them a core part of design decision-making.
Inclusive Research & Testing
User testing will increasingly involve people with disabilities to ensure real-world accessibility, rather than relying purely on theoretical compliance.
Designing for failure
A key element to our design approach is how we design for failure. By considering the stages the user needs to move through and the various tasks presented to them, we can build an understanding of complexity based upon device used, time to complete, connection requirements and required focus. This allows us to provide a baseline experience when one or more of these factors begin to degrade or fail completely, so that progress may be saved should the user fail to complete due to bandwidth, complexity, time allowance or even just ability to concentrate for instance. Even for fully able people, the concept of ‘situational ergonomics’ can mean that a crowded train, smartphone screen and spotty signal creates a number of accessibility and interaction challenges based upon the task facing them.
The Future of Accessibility in Design
The new legislation is a wake-up call, but also an opportunity. Accessibility will no longer be just a best practice; it will be a legal requirement. This shift will drive innovation in design tools, encourage better collaboration between designers and developers, and push businesses to invest in upskilling their teams. More importantly, it will raise the standard of digital experiences for everyone.
At 383, we believe accessibility isn’t just about compliance, it’s about creating better, more inclusive experiences by default. Our approach prioritises points of failure, identifying potential barriers early in the design process to prevent accessibility issues before they arise. We also believe that usability and human psychology should be baked into everything we create. Accessibility isn’t an add-on; it’s a fundamental principle of great design.
Ultimately, accessible design isn’t just the right thing to do, it’s smart business. Companies that prioritise inclusivity will reach a broader audience, reduce risk, and build stronger, more resilient products. The challenge now isn’t whether to embrace accessibility but how well we can integrate it into the way we design, build, and think about digital experiences.
