With the Accessibility Act, websites must be made accessible to people with disabilities: AccessiBit offers simple and effective solutions
Digital accessibility is the key to a connected world that leaves no one behind: over 101 million Europeans with disabilities, along with older people and users with temporary difficulties, depend on inclusive websites and apps to access essential services. In 2025, this is no longer just a matter of social responsibility, but a legal obligation and a strategic opportunity. When temporary disabilities, age-related difficulties, language barriers or context-of-use limitations are also factored in, the number of potentially excluded users grows exponentially. Solutions such as AccessiBit, part of the LifeGate Way ecosystem, are making an equitable web possible — one where inclusion is not optional, but a standard.
The European Accessibility Act (EU Directive 2019/882), published on 17 April 2019 and transposed into Italian law by Legislative Decree 82/2022, marks a turning point for digital inclusion. From 28 June 2025, all businesses — excluding micro-enterprises — must ensure that websites, mobile applications, e-commerce platforms and digital services placed on the market comply with accessibility standards harmonised at European level. In Italy, companies with a turnover exceeding 500 million euros are already required to comply, with penalties of up to 5 per cent of turnover for non-compliance. From 28 June 2025, with the entry into force of the European Accessibility Act, companies with a turnover of over 2 million euros or more than 10 employees must also comply, or face penalties of up to 40,000 euros, suspension of sales and removal from the market. The goal is clear: to eliminate discrepancies between member states and create an inclusive digital market where no one is excluded due to disability or technological limitations.
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), are the global reference for digital accessibility. The most recent version, mandatory for European compliance, is based on the POUR principles (Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, Robust) and includes 50 success criteria, such as alternative text for images, keyboard-accessible navigation, minimum contrast for text, and support for assistive technologies such as screen readers.
The WCAG are structured into three levels: A (basic), AA (intermediate, required by European legislation), and AAA (advanced), with a balance between technical rigour and practicability, including improvements for cognitive accessibility and compatibility with mobile devices. In addition to ensuring legal compliance, the WCAG improve user experience and search engine indexing, making websites more visible and competitive. Nevertheless, 96 per cent of global home pages still contain accessibility errors. Among the most common: images lacking alternative descriptions, unlabelled forms, PDFs unreadable by screen readers, and videos without subtitles.
AccessiBit, an Italian company based in Terni founded by Jacopo Pontone and Riccardo Linares, is dedicated to sustainable and inclusive solutions for digital accessibility. Its stated goal is to accelerate the transition towards a more accessible and inclusive web, within everyone's reach, while also simplifying compliance with national and European regulations. The idea of building a company focused vertically on these issues grew out of the founders' direct experience working with some of the world's largest tech companies: "By combining the needs expressed by the market with our team's expertise in web development, we wanted to create a company where we believe we can contribute to having a positive impact on people's daily lives — while doing what we love most: inventing and developing innovative technological solutions," the two co-founders explain.
The solution developed by AccessiBit simplifies the process of achieving digital accessibility compliance, integrating automation and artificial intelligence features to facilitate and speed up human intervention on websites, apps and digital documents in accordance with WCAG standards. The proprietary audit software performs a scan of the website and generates a detailed report of the accessibility issues found, proposing clear and direct solutions to be applied along with an indication of priorities.
The widget, meanwhile, allows users to independently customise the page according to their own needs: it automatically generates alternative text for images, adapts fonts to facilitate reading for people with dyslexia, activates reading masks for those with attention deficits, enables colour management for people with visual impairments, and so on. Among the services offered is also support for completing the AgID accessibility statement, which public bodies and service providers are required by law to submit. In a world where digital channels are the primary point of contact with the public, the Italian startup offers a concrete solution for businesses and e-commerce operators looking to take user experience to the next level, standing out positively for the inclusivity and performance of their digital spaces.
