Digital Accessibility Trends 2025 (POSTER)

2024 saw major shifts in accessibility — from companies moving from WCAG 2.1 to 2.2, to AI’s growing role in digital inclusion, and deadlines from the European Accessibility Act (EAA) bringing tougher requirements – organisations need to stay ahead.

To help you navigate the year ahead, we’ve created a free poster outlining the Top 10 Accessibility Trends for 2025.

The poster

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Transcript of the text on the poster

1. Accessibility Legislation is getting tougher.

• 25 of 27 EU Member States now have monitoring in place for the European Accessibility Act (EAA) 28 June 2025 deadline. WCAG 2.2 is becoming more required.

2. The EAA is pushing us beyond one-time WCAG compliance.

• It requires organisations to embed accessibility in their maintenance processes, to show how they’ll uphold compliance in an ongoing way.

3. The EAA is also pushing us to provide better documentation of our services’ accessibility and support.

• Organisations need to train Contact Centre staff in how to communicate with people with disabilities and answer their accessibility questions.

4. The EAA is also pushing organisations beyond software accessibility to hardware accessibility.

• Organisations who provide ticket machines, ATMs, payment terminals or information kiosks have 5 years to make them accessible (best to start now).

5. Vulnerability regulations are pushing organisations beyond ensuring websites and apps are accessible.

• Emails, PDFs, social media and print media must also be accessible.

6. Accessibility is being pushed now by economics more than DEI.

• The debate’s raging on whether we can afford inclusive representation and DEI. What’s clear is, for our workplaces to allow everyone to work, we can’t afford to neglect inclusive design (especially in procurement of digital tools).

7. AI only gets us 90% of the way.

• Content Creators should use AI to help create alt-text, captions and other accessibility features in 2025. They should also learn AI’s strengths and weaknesses to ensure they’re playing their rolewhere AI needs a human helping hand.

8. AI is now being sold as Assistive Technology (AT).

• AI summaries and content creation are helpful, especially for people who are neurodivergent. But it’s important for individuals needing ATs, rather than tech sales-people, to tell their employers which AI is best for them .

9. AI Agents and GenUI are taking us to a possible future of personalised interfaces and ATs for all.

• Come to Hassell Inclusion webinars to track how to get ready for this complete reinvention of accessibility.

10. Your accessibility strategy needs to prove its Return on Investment.

• We’re working to find you more compelling, recent, public ROI stories which can help you assure stakeholders that accessibility is worth doing continually.