The key to a compliant and competitive digital service – Extensive accessibility audit
European Accessibility Act, approved in 2019, will come into full effect on 28 June 2025. This means that also private companies' digital services must fulfill the defined, EU level accessibility criteria. The best way to comprehend the current level of accessibility and to plan the needed updates is to have an audit. In this article we will share in detail what that means and what our recommended way of doing a thorough audit is.
At Wunder, we’ve spent more than a decade helping organizations build digital services that are not only compliant with accessibility standards but also genuinely usable by everyone. This also means possibility for entirely new target groups as the services in digital can often be delivered easier than in real life. Our full Accessibility Audit goes far beyond automated checklists – combining expert insight, real-world testing, and strategic guidance to ensure your service is both legally sound and delightfully usable. Before going into details of how, let’s see the whys.
Accessibility business benefits
With the European Accessibility Act (EAA)Opens in a new tab coming into effect, accessibility is no longer just a nice-to-have—it’s a strategic business imperative. Proactively addressing accessibility doesn't just ensure legal compliance; it welcomes tangible advantages across user experience, brand perception, and performance.
1. Reach more people
An accessible website or digital service opens the door to a significantly larger audience. This includes the 87+ million people in Europe living with disabilities, as well as the rapidly growing elderly population who benefit from clearer interfaces, larger text, and easier navigation. Inclusive design means no one is left out.
2. Boost user experience for everyone
Accessibility improvements often result in better overall usability. Clear navigation, readable content, and intuitive design enhance the experience for all users—not just those with specific needs. When your digital service is easier to use, satisfaction, engagement, and conversion rates naturally follow.
3. Reduce legal and financial risk
As accessibility regulations tighten, especially under the EAA, failing to comply can result in legal action, reputational damage, and costly retrofitting. By ensuring WCAG 2.1 Level A & AA compliance now, you’re not only protecting your business—you’re preparing it for the future.
4. Strengthen your brand and reputation
Brands that champion accessibility are viewed as responsible, forward-thinking, and socially conscious. Demonstrating a genuine commitment to inclusion fosters greater trust among customers, partners, and stakeholders—something that’s increasingly important in a values-driven marketplace.
4. Improve SEO and site performance
Accessibility best practices—such as semantic HTML, text alternatives for images, and mobile responsiveness—also happen to be good for search engine optimisation. By making your content more accessible to assistive technologies, you’re also making it easier for search engines to find and rank it.
5. Drive innovation through inclusive design
Designing for diverse needs encourages creativity and flexibility in how you build and improve your digital services. Often, solutions created to address accessibility challenges lead to innovations that benefit everyone—whether it's keyboard navigation, voice interfaces, or simplified content structures.
6. Strengthen your brand and reputation
Companies that invest in accessibility send a clear message: they value all their customers. Accessibility is also about clarity. If using a digital service is difficult—information is hard to find, navigation is confusing, and the language used is unclear—it can have a significant negative impact on the brand. On the other hand, when a service is intuitive, easy, and pleasant to use, the effect on the overall brand is both positive and powerful.
Why accessibility matters
Accessibility is often misunderstood as something that only benefits a small group of people with permanent disabilities, such as vision or hearing impairments or mobility limitations. In reality, it serves a much broader audience and plays a critical role in ensuring equal access to digital services for everyone. Let’s keep in mind that nearly all of us will experience temporary or age-related accessibility challenges at some point in life.
People encounter accessibility barriers in, for example, the following wide range of scenarios:
- Invisible cognitive conditions, like ADHD or dyslexia, may consistently impact how a person interacts with digital content. Humans' attention span has also shrunk, impacting how digital services are used and how they should be designed. Easy-to-understand content also serves users who are not fully fluent in that particular language.
- Temporary conditions, like recovering from surgery, a broken arm, or experiencing stress or burnout symptoms, can significantly limit a user’s ability to focus, navigate, or interact with a digital interface.
- Situational challenges, such as trying to use a device in bright sunlight, watching a video in a noisy environment without captions, or browsing on a phone while holding a child, are part of everyday life for almost everyone.
Designing digital services with accessibility in mind means your service becomes more usable and intuitive for all these scenarios—and more. Ultimately, accessibility is about creating better, more inclusive digital experiences for everyone. And when you do that, your business benefits by reaching a wider audience.
What makes Wunder’s accessibility audit stand out
Our audit isn’t just a checkbox exercise—it’s a deep dive into how your service performs for real people using real tools in real situations.
Here is what our audit includes:
- Comprehensive compliance evaluation – We assess your digital service against WCAG 2.1 Level A and AA standards to pinpoint potential accessibility barriers.
- Manual testing that goes beyond automation – Automated tools catch only 30–40% of accessibility issues. Our specialists perform heuristic and manual testing to uncover more complex problems—including cognitive challenges.
- Real-world assistive technology testing – We test your service across multiple devices, browsers, and screen readers to ensure broad compatibility and usability.
- Actionable reporting – You’ll receive a prioritized list of findings along with clear, practical instructions for addressing them—empowering your team to take action effectively. We’ll also walk through the report together with you, giving space for clarifying questions and ensuring your team has the knowledge and resources needed to implement the recommended changes with confidence.
- Accessibility statement creation – We provide a legally compliant accessibility statement, ready to publish, outlining your current accessibility status, known issues, and planned improvements.
Strategic support for UX and legal protection – Beyond compliance, we help you build a service that is usable, delightful, and inclusive—protecting your brand and engaging more users.
Let’s make accessibility your competitive advantage
Whether you're preparing for the European Accessibility Act or simply want to create a better experience for everyone—Wunder is here to help.
Our experts can already provide valuable insights into your website's functionality and potential based on a light audit. You can choose below what you would like us to focus on initially. Light audits are free of charge and come with no obligation. The audit is based on publicly available data. We handle the data we collect in compliance with GDPR and will not share it with third parties without your consent.
As you know, we also offer more detailed and in-depth audits, and we’d be happy to share more information on their benefits, implementations, and pricing.
