94% of European websites are inaccessible to people with disabilities

94% of European websites do not comply with mandatory rules around accessibility for people with disabilities. This is evident from the first ever European ‘Digital Trust Index’, which was carried out by Belgian digital consultancy Craftzing to measure the accessibility of over 260,000 websites from 18 European countries. One year out from the European Accessibility Act coming into force, Craftzing considers these results to be ‘unacceptable’. Furthermore, the consultancy believes the companies themselves are missing a trick. “Considering the fact that 25% of people have some sort of disability, businesses could access 25% more customers and generate additional revenue.”

From 28 June 2025, the European Accessibility Act (EAA) will mean that essential services and products from European companies and organisations must fulfil a number of minimum criteria to ensure they are accessible to all, irrespective of any disabilities. Figures from Eurostat show that 1 in 4 adults in Europe have a disability. Craftzing therefore decided to test the home pages of European websites to see if they met the criteria to be imposed by the EAA. On average, no fewer than 94% of the over 260,000 screened home pages from 18 European countries failed the test.

“In a society that is increasingly using digital methods, inaccessible websites are excluding a huge share of society. This could include people This could be about people with visual impairments who are not given sufficient tools on the website to read information, those with hand issues who cannot easily navigate a website, or others with cognitive limitations who struggle to understand complex website structures. It is important that companies and governments are aware of this. Digital society should work for everybody.”
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​- Roeland Tegenbos, CEO of Craftzing

People with visual disabilities are biggest victims

Websites in all European countries most often fail to meet two important criteria for making their information legible for people with visual impairments. The most common issue is that 71% of the websites set up the colour contrast between text and background incorrectly. As a result, it may be difficult for colour-blind individuals to read information on the website. Additionally, many websites lack descriptions for links (63% of websites), images (33%) and buttons (18%). These descriptions help visually impaired people, using speech and read-out-loud technology, to navigate websites and better understand content.

“Businesses often only begin to focus on digital accessibility once they have launched their digital projects. A common excuse is that it is difficult to take all limitations into account and it costs far too much time, energy and money to address all the various issues. The good news, however, is that the most common problems can be resolved relatively easily. Also, if organisations consider accessibility at the start of a digital project rather than at the end, it saves a lot of time and effort. This also expands the website’s reach. Considering the fact that 25% of people have some sort of disability, businesses could access 25% more customers and generate additional revenue.”
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​-Roeland Tegenbos, CEO of Craftzing

Hungary at the bottom of the ladder, Norway is ‘least worst’

In the comparison of 18 European countries, Hungary (96.3%), Romania (96.1%) and the Czech Republic (95.8%) achieved the worst scores, with the most websites that were inaccessible to people with disabilities. Denmark, France and Belgium took up the middle-ground with scores of around 94%, with places 9th, 8th and 7th respectively. Sweden, Finland and Norway were at the top, with the best websites. That said, Craftzing noted that the ‘best’ scores were still not especially good. In Norway, the best of the bunch, 87.7% of the websites failed the accessibility tests.

“We cannot refer to the ‘best performing’ countries, only the ‘least worst’ because, in reality, none of the European countries have an acceptable accessibility level. Organisations in European countries are far from ready for the European Accessibility Act, which comes into force next year. At Craftzing, we are arguing for stringent enforcement and fines for companies that fail to provide accessibility. We believe this is necessary to encourage businesses to do the right thing, i.e. build a digital society in which everyone can participate.”
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​-Roeland Tegenbos, CEO of Craftzing

See all results of the research on www.digitaltrustindex.eu

^{About the Digital Trust Index}

^{The Digital Trust Index is a research initiative conducted by the digital consultancy Craftzing to measure the accessibility of digital platforms. Every quarter, the index focuses on one aspect of digital trust. This edition targets accessibility.}

^{For this test, Craftzing used an automated test that we carried out on a representative sample of 260,079 European domain names, from the Tranco list of top websites. With test and scraping tools, Craftzing created a research application which can test hundreds of thousands of the home pages of EU websites on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) version 2.1, levels A and AA. To this end, Deque’s axe API was used.}

^{A total of 18 European countries were analysed. Craftzing analysed no countries that had fewer than 4,000 websites in their testing sample. This would have generated a significant difference with other countries and would have hindered comparisons between the other EU countries. This is why some European countries were excluded from the sample.}