Accessibility News: June 2025
The latest accessibility news for June 2025, including two new W3C standards aim to improve eBook accessibility, a major report finds nearly all emails contain critical accessibility issues, and the European Accessibility Act officially comes into force, setting new requirements for digital inclusion across the EU.
New Accessibility Standards for eBooks Finalised by W3C
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)’s Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) has officially published two new web standards focused on improving accessibility for long-form digital content such as eBooks. The Digital Publishing WAI-ARIA Module 1.1 (DPUB-ARIA) and the Digital Publishing Accessibility API Mappings 1.1 (DPUB-AAM) have moved from draft status to become W3C Recommendations following an extensive period of public consultation.
DPUB-ARIA defines a set of additional ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) roles that make it easier for assistive technologies—like screen readers—to understand and navigate the structure of complex digital documents, such as chapters, footnotes, or bibliographies in eBooks.
Meanwhile, DPUB-AAM provides guidance to browser and eBook reader developers on how to correctly map those roles to accessibility APIs, ensuring that users receive consistent and meaningful feedback.
These new standards are an important step in making digital publishing more inclusive for people with disabilities and demonstrate a commitment to accessibility in evolving content formats.
New Report Reveals 99.8% of Emails Have Major Accessibility Issues
A recent report from Email Markup Consortium has found that a staggering 99.8% of over the 400,000 emails analysed contained serious or critical accessibility issues.
The consortium’s findings point to a range of common barriers, including poor colour contrast, missing or non-descriptive alt text for images, lack of semantic structure like headings and lists, and designs that rely heavily on inaccessible table layouts. These issues can make it difficult or impossible for people using screen readers or other assistive technologies to access the content of emails.
The report serves as a reminder for all organisations to include email accessibility as part of their overall digital accessibility strategy. This might involve auditing email templates for accessibility or reviewing the use of colour in emails to ensure that colour combinations meet the WCAG minimum contrast requirements.
European Accessibility Act Comes Into Force
The European Accessibility Act (EAA) officially comes into force this week. As of 28 June, all organisations operating within the EU must meet new accessibility requirements.
Under the legislation, it sets new accessibility requirements for a wide range of digital products and services, including websites, mobile apps, e-commerce platforms, eBooks, banking services, ATMs, and more.
The EAA applies to any business operating in the EU—or providing goods and services to customers within the EU—regardless of where the company is based. So even an Australian based company offering services within the EU could be covered.
Read more about the EAA and its impact in our recent blog article.