Digital Trust Index 2025 The State of Digital Accessibility in Europe

1. Summary 93% of European websites fail accessibility requirements, leaving millions at a disadvantage

• 266,000 European homepages from 18 countries were tested for accessibility issues, slighty more than the 2024 study. For Belgium, 7,612 homepages were assessed.

• The state of accessibility in Europe is poor:

  • We found accessibility issues on 93% of tested pages (92.97%).

  • That’s less than a 1% improvement compared to 2024 (-0.84%).

• All tested countries perform poorly, but some less so than others. Norway, Finland, and Sweden have the best (least bad) scores, while Slovakia, Romania, and Hungary rank lowest. Belgium just makes it into the top five.

• The Digital Trust Index also reveals differences across content categories. Public sector websites stand out with the highest scores, while retail performs the worst.

• AI-supported chatbots score relatively poor. To supplement our large data research, we’ve manually tested chatbots on fifteen popular Belgian websites from various categories. Only two chatbots out of fifteen had a positive assessment on all of our checks.

• The most common issues are: low colour contrast, hard-to-distinguish links, missing text descriptions for images, poor or missing labels for links and buttons, and incorrect language settings. These problems pose significant obstacles, though they are relatively easy to fix.

• June 28th, 2025 the European Accessibility Act enforces accessibility requirements for essential products and services. Companies and organisaties accross Europe are clearly not ready for this and risk to be fined if they don’t comply.

2. Impact Digital trust is about everyone participating in our digital society

Technology is reaching into every part of our society. From making a doctor’s appointment and ordering food, to using e-gyms, banking, or meeting new people and engaging with culture and entertainment. Digital solutions are increasingly essential. They offer efficiency and improvements for both companies and users. But not all users benefit equally.

Not everyone is able to quickly adopt new applications and keep track of a multitude of digital services. Is an application easy to use and understand? Does it add value? And most importantly: is it designed so everyone can use it, regardless of ability or background?

Over 100 million Europeans ^[1] — one in four adults — live with a disability. Challenges related to mobility, vision, hearing, cognition, or other aspects of daily life are common, whether permanent or temporary.

If we want people to fully trust a digital society, we need to make sure that our digital products and services are accessible and trustworthy. Europe is contributing to this effort with several regulations, like the Digital Markets Act, the Digital Services Act and the European Accessibility Act ^[2]. The latter requires companies and organisations that provide essential digital services and products to meet accessibility standards by 28 June 2025.

3. Results Europe is not ready

According to the Craftzing research, European companies and organisations are still far from ready to make their digital services accessible to people with disabilities, as required by upcoming legislation. We tested 266,000 European website homepages using an automated tool that checks them against a subset of accessibility requirements from the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), like sufficient contrast for people with visual impairments. 93% of all tested websites fail at least one of our tests. That’s less than a 1% improvement compared to 2024 (-0.84%).

Country ranking

When ranking countries by the percentage of websites that fail at least one test, the Nordic countries perform slightly better than the rest of Europe. However, no country has an acceptable level of websites free from accessibility issues.

Although all countries score poorly, there have been some shifts in the rankings compared to last year.

• The three Scandinavian countries — Norway, Sweden, and Finland — lead the ranking and also show the most significant progress.

• Belgium shows an improvement of +1,75% (third largest improvement) compared to last year and just makes it into the top five.

The following table ranks the eighteen tested countries on percentage of websites that fail at least one test from least fails (Norway with 87.68%) to most fails (Hungary with 96.31%) and compares it to last year’s data.

The following chart shows how each country’s ranking changed between 2024 and 2025.

The following chart shows how many homepages failed multiple of our 61 tests. Each test can have many failures, or violations, against it. For example: a design with low contrast and hard to read colour combinations will most likely have many violations against the 'colour contrast' test.

Category ranking

In addition to country-level differences, the Digital Trust Index also explores possible variations across content categories.

We assigned following categories:

• Business Services legal, consulting, HR

• Education and Science

• Energy and utilities electricity, water, waste, climate

• Financial Services insurance, banking, credit, accounting, leasing, capital markets

• Healthcare sports, fitness, care, pharma, life sciences, family, wellness

• Manufacturing production, automotive, chemicals, metal, machines

• Media and Entertainment news, music, hobbies, interests

• Mobility & Logistics public transport, logistics, ports, airplanes, supply chain, postal services, freight

• Non-profit NGO's

• Public Sector law, government, politics, defense, public safety, justice

• Real estate development, construction, technics

• Retail consumption products, food, drinks, home, shopping, e-commerce, style, fashion, luxury goods

• Technology computing, software, hardware, social media, telco

• Tourism travel, hotel, restaurant, events, festivals

• Uncategorized

There is little variation between categories.

• The Public Sector consistently performs best, scoring around 10% above average in nearly every country.

• Financial Services ranks second, with results 3.5% better than average.

• At the other end of the spectrum, Retail scores the lowest, performing 3% below average.

4. Common issues The spotlight on common accessibility hurdles

Every country in our dataset returned the same list of most failed tests or common issues. All of these pose real obstacles to a wide range of users, with or without disabilities. Most of them, however, are relatively easy to fix by people that have knowledge of accessibility. All of them can be prevented by building products and services with digital inclusion in mind.

The most common issues remain unchanged compared to 2024: low colour contrast, hard-to-distinguish links, missing text descriptions for images, poor or missing labels for links and buttons, and incorrect language settings.

5. chatbots Accessibility of Belgium’s most used Chatbots

AI-supported chatbots are becoming quite common. They’re intended to help users with questions or issues more effectively and more quickly, but are they usable by everyone? To supplement our large data research, we’ve manually tested chatbots on fifteen popular Belgian websites from various sectors such as transportation, retail, insurance, banking, government, public utilities and telecommunication.

Our tests assessed how easily chatbots can be used in different accessibility scenarios:

• using only a keyboard;

• with a screen reader;

• when zooming in to enlarge text;

• and by checking for colour contrast issues.

Only two chatbots out of fifteen had a positive assessment on all four of our checks. They weren’t perfect, but usable for most users.

Six chatbots had issues when navigating with a keyboard. In many cases, the chatbot couldn’t be opened or closed without using a mouse or touch. In addition, missing visible focus indicators — like a clear outline showing where you are on the page — made it nearly impossible to navigate using only a keyboard or switch device. Both issues are easy to fix.

For twelve chatbots, using a screen reader was difficult or even impossible. A screen reader is software that reads content aloud for people who are blind or visually impaired. Some chatbots couldn’t be opened at all, and in many cases, the bot’s replies were not announced or were announced incorrectly.

We found colour contrast issues on six chatbots, mostly due to very subtle and low-contrast text input designs. Focus states of chatbot controls, too, were often subtle and hard to see. These issues are easily fixed.

All chatbots did okay when enlarging text. The biggest issue we found were sticky elements that cover large portions of the screen, making the chatbot harder to use (but not impossible).

6. Methodology About the research

The Digital Trust Index 2025 is an annual research initiative conducted by the digital advisory firm Craftzing to measure the state of accessibility of digital platforms. For more details on how the data was collected and analysed, see the full methodology.

7. The path forward You shouldn't just consider accessibility; you should start with it

One in four European adults have some form of disability. For many, participating in the digital society is challenging. Most organizations are unaware of this and are missing out on potential revenue and impact. Yet improvements made to enhance accessibility often benefit a much broader audience — think of closed captions in noisy environments or larger tap targets on mobile. This is known as the curb cut effect: design choices originally intended for a specific group end up helping many. Developing digital services with accessibility in mind from the start creates better products for everyone.

Today, accessibility is often an afterthought, something considered at the end of a digital project. That’s not the right approach. It will require significant rework and budget to fix. You shouldn't just consider accessibility; you should start with it.

Organisations that create an environment that stimulates inclusion have higher digital trust and avoid legal risks. Including accessibility at the start of your processes minimises effort and maximises outcome.

Embrace the European Accessibility Act as an opportunity to enhance user experience and expand your reach. Let's build a more accessible future.

8. Frquently asked questions What you need to know about the EEA

The European Accessibility Act is not written in plain language and is open to interpretation in some areas. Legislation differs between member states because countries can add extra measures when transposing the directive into their national legislation. Here’s our concise answer (and therefore not legal advice) to frequently asked questions for the Belgian consumer market.

References