And make the entire customer journey more customer-friendly – for everyone

Whether your reasons are ethical, commercial or both: making your website accessible to people with disabilities is the right thing to do. But where do you start? You might think: just tick off the WCAG guidelines and digital accessibility will follow naturally. Right?

No, says our founder Joris. In fact, there’s the most to be gained by looking beyond the guidelines – for yourself and for all your customers.

EAA: a hot topic

‘WCAG guidelines’ and ​‘European Accessibility Act’. Mention these words in many a boardroom and you’ll soon hear a collective sigh.

Digital accessibility is a hot topic for many organisations, and that’s hardly surprising: the WCAG accessibility guidelines already applied to public sector bodies, but from 2025 they will also apply to many commercial organisations. 

3 million people with a (temporary) disability

And by now, many stakeholders are convinced not only that they must make the shift, but also that they want to. The reasons are compelling: three million people in the Netherlands alone have a (temporary) disability. So, as well as expanding your market, you also add value by making inclusion part of your brand.

So what do you do once you’ve decided that digital accessibility is worth the investment of time and money? ​‘First, you consult the WCAG guidelines,’ says Joris. ​‘That makes sense, really, because the law requires it. So you quickly start to think you’re doing it right if you apply them all.’

WCAG is just one piece of the jigsaw

But that turns out to be an oversimplification. Joris: ​‘The WCAG guidelines are only part of the puzzle. It’s possible to create a website that complies perfectly with the guidelines, yet is still not accessible. The issue then lies in the service provided: the product may well be accessible, but the context in which it’s used isn’t.’

‘Look at the architecture. In the construction industry, too, there are all sorts of rules governing accessibility. A wheelchair must be able to get inside, and corridors must be of a certain width. But if you then fail to think about where to place the toilets and meeting rooms are hundreds of metres apart, your building is still unusable.’
 

A blind person with a paper letter

And that’s how it works online too. Joris: ​‘Suppose you’re opening a bank account or applying for a DigiD. You start the application online. That process fully complies with the WCAG standards. But then you receive your username and a temporary password in a paper letter. At that point, someone who is blind or visually impaired cannot really proceed without help. Finally, the last steps – such as logging in and activating the account – are digital and accessible again. There’s only one conclusion to be drawn: precisely the steps that are essential for securely opening your account aren’t 100% accessible. And that makes the whole process inaccessible.’

In short: the WCAG guidelines do not cover everything in this regard.

Accessible service, impractical solutions

‘Accessibility requires a sound design approach across the entire service,’ he says. You need to understand what your customer needs across the board. If you don’t put people first in the design process but do apply all the rules, you’ll end up with an accessible service, but one full of unusable and non-user-friendly solutions. That’s putting the cart before the horse.

WCAG-compliant with less effort

But how do you actually go about it? Joris: ​‘If you’re a business just starting out with accessibility, don’t think about the WCAG guidelines first – think about users’ needs instead. Which parts of your services actually align well with those needs? Carry out user research. Also test digital solutions with people with disabilities. Perhaps you could even drop some of your services and digital solutions: that means it’ll take a lot less work to make that part WCAG-compliant. So take a smart approach: which guidelines are actually relevant, and which aren’t?’ Looking beyond the WCAG guidelines brings nothing but benefits, says Joris. For both you and your end user. Because whatever you do will be better tailored to your customers’ needs, and therefore an improvement.’

Not the icing on the cake

So why is there still so little thinking beyond the WCAG guidelines? He believes this is partly down to a lack of maturity. ​‘There was never a law saying that products had to be accessible; now, all of a sudden, there’s a deadline. That causes a lot of stress. And then you run the risk of thinking in black and white and blindly following the WCAG guidelines, rather than seizing the opportunity to look at your entire portfolio.’

‘The moment you start looking much more from the perspective of those customer needs, and also take into account groups with disabilities, you might even come up with different products, services and channels that you hadn’t considered before. That’s what I find lacking in much of the discussion about accessibility. People often act as if digital accessibility is the icing on the cake. But it isn’t. It should already be part of the mix.’

Read more:

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The willingness is often there. But becoming digitally accessible requires more than that: it also takes time, effort and money. Organisations therefore often keep putting it off. As a UX designer, how do you convince your internal stakeholders to go ahead with these investments?