Global Accessibility Awareness Day and Digital Quality Insights
This week, we celebrate the 14th Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD). As stated on the GAAD webpage, the GAAD Foundation’s mission is to disrupt the culture of technology and digital product development to include accessibility as a core requirement. Applause supports this goal throughout the year, and as part of that effort we recently ran our annual accessibility survey, from which we published our State of Digital Quality in Accessibility report, and a related press release.
In this blog, we share a deeper look at some of the survey data included in the report and highlight some additional trends and insights that we believe may help organizations striving to build more accessible products and services.
Organizations continue to prioritize accessibility
In 2025, 83.9% of 1,570 respondents ranked digital accessibility as a top priority or important to their company, a 4-point increase year over year.
The following survey questions reveal some top-level insights into organizational states of accessibility around: WCAG compliance, accessibility understanding, coding, and the European Accessibility Act readiness.
This year, for the first time since 2022, more than half of respondents were confident that their company’s website met current WCAG standards: 54.3%, up from 41.7% last year and 30.4% three years ago.
Over the last three years, the number of engineers who always or often keep accessibility in mind as they develop software has steadily increased.
Is your company preparing for the EU Accessibility Act (EAA) ahead of the June 2025 compliance deadline? (n=432)
66.0% – on schedule (up from 32.1% in 2024)
28.0% – a bit behind schedule: (slightly up from 25.91% in 2024)
6.0% – have not started: (down from 22.9% in 2024)
Organization accessibility prioritization and delivery disconnect
While respondents acknowledge a culture of accessibility prioritization, 67.8% say they lack enough internal expertise and resources to test for accessibility on an on-going basis without external help.
How well-equipped is your company, in terms of internal expertise and resources, to test for accessibility on an ongoing basis, without external help? (n=1010)
| Issue | Percentage |
| No in-house expertise/resources | 14.7% |
| Limited in-house expertise/resources | 22.8% |
| Some in-house expertise/resources, but could use more | 30.3% |
| Adequate in-house expertise/resources | 21.7% |
| Plenty of in-house expertise/resources | 10.6% |
Another factor that seems at odds with accessibility as a leading priority: nearly 20% of those who state that their organization practices inclusive design report that they do not directly engage with people with disabilities. Overlooking – or not having easy access to people with disabilities or input into the SDLC – can lead to a significant gap in product development.
How does the team or person who leads accessibility and inclusive design efforts for your organization incorporate inclusive design? Choose all that apply. (n= 751)
| They bring in PWD from outside our company to discuss key considerations for design and development | 47.4% |
| We don’t directly engage with PWD for input | 19.2% |
| We have various PWD on staff who provide insight | 48.3% |
| We use public knowledge around inclusive design, but do not directly interact with PWD for input | 50.3% |
| I don’t know | 4.8% |
Common accessibility errors – what does your organization find?
What common mistake(s) do you see developers making from an accessibility perspective? Choose all that apply. (n= 1,014)
- Videos lack captions
- Site is not usable by screen reader
- Error alerts are not descriptive
- Site is not navigable via keyboard
- Site is not high contrast
- Site and page structure are unclear
- I am not aware of any accessibility issues on our website or apps
- Objects/videos automatically animate or play sound
- Forms are not accessible
Accessibility testing approaches: automated, AI, manual
Do you plan to use AI to solve any accessibility issues within your organization? (n=1,094)
| Yes | 40.3% |
| No | 29.2% |
| Don’t know | 30.5% |
18.7% of respondents answered “yes” to using an automated accessibility tool and 81% of this group of respondents stated they are satisfied (49.2%) or extremely satisfied (32.6%) with the tool. Those who are dissatisfied with their automated accessibility tool cite the following issues: (n=17)
| Issues in 2025 in descending order of frequency | Rank |
| Tool finds too many false positives | 1 |
| Tool finds too many low severity issues | 2 |
| We fixed the bugs the tool identified and still have blockers | 3 |
| Tool produces inconsistent results when run on the same site/url over time | 4 |
| Tool isn’t finding blockers | 5 |
| It takes too much time to manually parse all the errors the tool identifies | 6 |
Are you using manual testing to identify potential accessibility issues? (n=942)
| Yes | 69.0% |
| No | 21.5% |
| I don’t know | 9.4% |
While many organizations state they engage with people with disabilities to build their non-AI digital products, when it comes to developing AI tools, there is a disconnect:
Do you specifically seek input from underrepresented viewpoints like people with disabilities to test your AI/Gen AI products, whether for accessibility or not? (n=1,093)
| 2025 | Percentage |
| Yes (please describe how) | 27.6% |
| No, we do not | 29.6% |
| No, we are not developing any AI products or features | 30.3% |
| Don’t know | 12.4% |
We hope this data gives you some insights into the progress and struggles of other organizations around accessibility, and serves as a benchmark perspective for your team.
From our data (and experience with global clients), here are a few takeaways:
- While accessibility is being progressively prioritized among organizations, there is a disconnect between prioritization and delivery. Many organizations need to evaluate their accessibility programs to see where they can add internal or external expertise and staffing to meet their goals.
- Automated tools using AI are increasingly popular, but most respondents understand the importance of using manual testing (by many estimates, automated accessibility testing reliably finds a range of 20 – 40% of accessibility issues) – and testing with the broadest group of people that is practical, particularly with persons with disabilities – to complement automated efforts.
- Developing any digital experience, particularly new AI-based features, requires the same level of input from persons with disabilities. Organizations must invest in ensuring that diverse input is integrated across the entire product development lifecycle.
Each day should be Global Accessibility Awareness Day
No matter where you are in your accessibility/inclusive design journey, there’s always room for improvement, and a consistent focus on accessibility goes a long way to progressing your organization’s inclusivity goals. Some of the actions your organization will face are quite technical in nature, need input from PwD and require significant learning and mind shifts.
From our work with many global organizations, Applause has core offerings to help teams along their journey. However you move forward, whether hiring your own personnel, partnering with a third party or both, we believe that these elements and actions are key to success:
Steps your organization can take to move forward with accessibility and inclusive design
- Insights from persons with disabilities – Gain access to various assistive technology users and people with disabilities to provide high-interaction feedback as consultation sessions, UX recording and/or training participation.
- Inclusive design UX studies – Conduct focused studies with a UX researcher and panel of people with disabilities to identify pain points and suggestions from improvement to the product experience.
- Usability studies – Execute formal usability studies with a dedicated UX researcher to examine any aspect of a digital experience.
- Accessibility and inclusive design consulting – Gain in-depth support in the design and development phase, producing deliverables such as design reviews and design system evaluations.
- Education and training – Provide your organization a range of education and customized training solutions for any role in the product life cycle.
- In-sprint testing – Get just-in-time feedback on critical WCAG checkpoints synced with development sprints.
- Conformance reviews – Do a full conformance audit against WCAG standards conducted by Applause experts.
- Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) authoring – After assessing accessibility conformance, complete a VPAT(s) for your product(s). An impartial, expert third party can be very helpful in this regard.
For a more condensed view of trends and insights from this year’s Applause accessibility survey, please read:
For more general information on how we can help your organization around your accessibility and inclusive design goals, please visit our accessibility testing page.
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