Today marks this year's Global Accessibility Awareness Day. The purpose of GAAD is to get everyone talking, thinking and learning about digital access and inclusion, and the more than one billion people with disabilities/impairments. Accessibility features in our everyday devices are improving exponentially as each GAAD passes, with notable changes to mobile operating systems in the last couple of years focused on improving the user experience for those with accessibility requirements. There are hundreds of events taking place to mark GAAD 2021 - find out more here.

This is of course always more than can be done. Around 80 million people in the EU are affected by a disability in some degree, and in recognising this, in 2025 the European Accessibility Act will come into force, which introduces a number of accessibility requirements that manufacturers and service providers (+ a few others) must comply with in respect of in-scope consumer products and services. Such services include electronic communications services, access to media, passenger transport, banking, ebooks and ecommerce.

This EAA is an EU directive, therefore Member states of the EU are required to publish their implementing legislation by 28 June 2022, with those measures coming into force from 28 June 2025. More information here.