Web accessibility is no longer a side issue
An inaccessible website stops some users from reading, understanding, navigating, buying or getting in touch. It is first and foremost a usability problem, but it is also a legal and commercial one: an inaccessible journey can shut out customers, block transactions and weaken trust.
Across Europe, the reference standard is WCAG, carried into law through the harmonised standard EN 301 549. Several countries add an operational audit framework on top. In France, that framework is the RGAA (Référentiel général d'amélioration de l'accessibilité), which translates the technical requirements for websites, applications and digital services into testable criteria: HTML structure, text alternatives, contrast, forms, keyboard navigation and compatibility with screen readers.
What real-world compliance looks like
A barometer published in January 2026 on the accessibility of French municipal websites gives a concrete measure of the gap between obligation and reality: only 16.3% of the municipalities analysed reached a satisfactory technical score, while the majority (54.7%) sat in an intermediate band, with a sound technical base that still falls short of genuine accessibility.
Municipalities with a satisfactory technical score (January 2026): 16.3%
Municipalities in the intermediate band (sound base, not enough): 54.7%
Maximum penalty in France for public bodies and large companies under the RGAA: up to €50,000 (imposed by Arcom, the French audiovisual and digital regulator)
Maximum penalty in France for businesses covered by the European Accessibility Act (more than 10 employees or €2 million turnover): up to €300,000, or a daily penalty of €3,000
These figures focus on the public sector, where obligations are oldest, yet they describe a situation that applies just as well to private companies across Europe: actual compliance remains well below regulatory ambitions, which leaves a significant risk gap for any organisation that has not yet started a structured approach.
Public sector, private sector: clarifying who is covered
Public sector: under the EU Web Accessibility Directive (2016/2102), administrations, local authorities and public bodies must meet accessibility requirements and publish an accessibility statement. France adds a multi-year plan and an action plan, and its digital directorate (DINUM) is running a 2025-2026 verification campaign targeting towns of more than 5,000 inhabitants, with financial penalties for administrations that fail to act.
Some large private companies: in several countries, including France, obligations already applied to private organisations above certain thresholds, notably publishing a statement and a compliance level.
European Accessibility Act: Directive (EU) 2019/882, applicable since 28 June 2025 in every Member State, extends requirements to certain products and services aimed at consumers: e-commerce, banking services, transport, e-books, electronic communications, terminals and more. Penalties are set nationally; in France, they can reach €300,000 or €3,000 per day for the companies concerned.
Service microenterprises: the directive exempts microenterprises providing services (fewer than 10 staff and no more than €2 million turnover or balance sheet), so the company's exact status must be checked before drawing any conclusion.
The key point: not every company falls under the same regime, but every company has an interest in making its interfaces usable. An accessible website converts better, generates fewer support requests and usually improves overall technical quality.
The four principles behind the criteria
WCAG, and therefore the RGAA and EN 301 549, are built on four principles. They help you understand the logic behind the technical criteria rather than treating them as an arbitrary checklist:
Perceivable: information must be presented in a way that can be perceived, whatever sense is used (text alternatives for images, sufficient contrast, captions for videos).
Operable: the interface must work with a keyboard, without arbitrary time limits, and with consistent navigation from one page to the next.
Understandable: content and behaviour must be predictable, with plain language and explicit error messages.
Robust: content must remain interpretable by a wide range of assistive technologies, current and future, which requires clean, semantically correct HTML.
This structure helps prioritise an audit: a site that fails on Operable (no keyboard navigation) completely blocks part of its visitors, whereas a shortfall on Robust (imperfect HTML structure) may only have a partial impact depending on the assistive technology used.
Priority actions
Audit a representative sample: home page, service page, product page, basket, form, contact page, editorial content and high-traffic pages.
Fix what blocks users: impossible keyboard navigation, form fields without labels, insufficient contrast, content unreadable by screen readers, invisible focus.
Document compliance: accessibility statement, compliance rate, known non-conformities, improvement plan and a contact channel.
Build accessibility into the project cycle: design, development, acceptance testing, editorial contributions and maintenance.
Train the teams: a compliant site can degrade if content added later ignores good practice, which partly explains why most of the sites analysed remain in an intermediate band rather than a satisfactory one.
A gradual, measurable approach
Accessibility can feel daunting when it is treated as a single block. The right method is to prioritise: critical journeys and blocking obstacles first, then less severe gaps. For an e-commerce site, for example, a basket that cannot be used with a keyboard or a payment button without an accessible label must come before any cosmetic improvement.
A recognised framework, whether the RGAA in France or a WCAG-based audit elsewhere, makes it possible to objectify gaps and track progress. An initial audit identifies the non-conformities, then an action plan corrects them in batches. This approach mirrors the fundamentals of any sound technical review, as we explain in our article on the IT audit.
A benefit that goes beyond compliance
Reducing accessibility to a legal obligation misses the point. An accessible website benefits everyone, not only people with disabilities. Clear keyboard navigation, sufficient contrast, explicit labels and a clean structure improve the experience of every visitor, including those browsing on the move, in bright sunlight or on a slow connection.
The returns are concrete and often underestimated. Semantically correct code, which accessibility requires, is also better understood by search engines: accessibility and search engine optimisation go hand in hand. Clearer journeys and forms reduce abandonment and errors, and therefore support requests and lost baskets. Far from being a box to tick, accessibility raises the technical and commercial quality of the whole site.
Compliance that holds over time
The main lesson of the 2026 barometer is not so much the low share of fully compliant sites as the number of sites stuck in an intermediate band, with a sound but insufficient base. The reason is almost always the same: initial compliance erodes as content is added. An image published without alternative text, a new component with poor structure, an inaccessible PDF put online, and the level slips without anyone noticing.
Accessibility is therefore not a state you reach once, but a requirement to maintain. That means building the right habits into the production cycle, training those who feed the site and regularly checking that new features do not break what had been fixed. A one-off audit resets the counter; the process is what stops it drifting again.
Prioritise what matters rather than aiming for perfection
Faced with a framework as broad as WCAG or the RGAA, the worst strategy is to do nothing for fear of not doing everything. The right reflex is to start with what really blocks use, on the journeys that matter most, then widen the scope step by step. A basket usable with a keyboard and a correctly labelled form are worth more than perfect compliance on pages nobody visits. Accessibility is built in batches, by objectifying gaps and tracking progress.
That is exactly the approach to follow to spend as little time as possible in that intermediate band: identify the real obstacles, prioritise them and build a correction plan you can sustain. Contact us to discuss it.
Sources: RGAA Checker, 2026 barometer of digital accessibility in French municipalities (in French) · RGAA, the French accessibility framework (in French) · EUR-Lex, Directive (EU) 2019/882