What the 2026 Disability Index tells us about the future of digital accessibility

The 2026 Disability Index Report provides a global snapshot of how organisations are approaching disability inclusion, drawing on 627 submissions from 421 organisations across 45 countries.

The annual survey and report assesses disability inclusion across areas ranging from employment and accommodations to leadership and supplier inclusion as well as marketing and communications.

The report argues that disability inclusion needs to move beyond standalone initiatives and become embedded into the systems, governance and decision-making processes that shape how organisations operate. 

There is an important message running through the findings for organisations responsible for digital products and services: accessibility is increasingly becoming a core business capability and there is a shift away from considering it as an afterthought.

For organisations looking to mature their accessibility practice, several findings are particularly important. This article will highlight some of the important points from this year’s report, of particular importance to digital accessibility:

• Accessibility needs to extend to procurement
• Organisations need resources to fix the barriers they find
• Marketing and communications are essential aspects of accessibility
• Accessible and Inclusive reporting are an important accountability measure
• Accessibility needs to work internally
• Testing with people with disability remains critical
• AI is and will continue to impact accessibility

Accessibility needs to extend into procurement

One of the clearest opportunities identified in the report relates to suppliers and vendors:

Only 48% of participating organisations require suppliers and vendors to meet physical and digital accessibility requirements as a condition of purchase. Even fewer, 47%, have a formal process for remediating accessibility issues originating from suppliers or vendors.

This matters because organisations increasingly rely on third-party technology to implement core systems and services, both internally and customer facing. 

This includes websites, platforms, HR systems, learning platforms, customer portals and other digital tools – all of which may all introduce accessibility barriers that an organisation did not directly create, but its employees and customers still experience.

An organisation can have a strong internal accessibility team and still introduce inaccessible technology if accessibility is not considered during procurement.

Building accessibility requirements into procurement includes a strong procurement policy that requires:

• defining accessibility requirements before going to market
• requesting evidence such as accessibility conformance reports and an assessment of their progress
• independently evaluating higher-risk products, including accessibility requirements in contracts; and 
• establishing responsibility for remediation when barriers are identified.

The move is about making accessibility part of the decision about what gets purchased in the first place, not seeing accessibility as an afterthought or something ‘to be fixed’ once a platform is rolled out.

Organisations need resources to fix the barriers they find

Accessibility testing is important, but solely identifying an accessibility problem does not remove it.

The regional findings illustrate this particularly clearly. In Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), only 50% of participating organisations reported having dedicated resources to resolve accessibility and compatibility issues affecting customers and clients using public-facing digital products and content, compared with a global rate of 74%.

The distinction between identifying accessibility issues and having the organisational capability to resolve them is significant.

Accessibility audits are essential at regular intervals to provide a baseline and to ensure accessibility issues are being identified. However, it is also essential that organisations have the internal systems and processes to fix these issues. This includes:

• defined ownership of the issues identified
• remediation processes 
• appropriately trained teams
• prioritisation mechanisms and 
  resources to address issues when they are identified.

Accessibility findings should ultimately feed into the same development and governance processes used to manage other aspects of digital quality.

Marketing and communications are essential aspects of the accessibility conversation

For the first time in 2026, the Disability Index includes a dedicated Marketing and Communications category.

The ten questions examine how businesses integrate disability inclusion into their public-facing and internal communications. Importantly, the measures go beyond disability representation.

They include the accessibility auditing of external digital content, allocation of resources to resolve accessibility barriers, usability testing with assistive technology and requirements for external agencies to meet accessibility standards.

This reflects an important development in how organisations should think about accessible communications.

Accessibility is not only the responsibility of developers. Marketing teams publish websites, landing pages, social media content, videos, PDFs, emails, presentations and other marketing collateral, all of which can create barriers for people with disability when not created with accessibility in mind.

Agencies and other external partners also need to understand and meet an organisation's accessibility requirements. Otherwise, accessibility improvements made internally can quickly be undermined when inaccessible content is introduced through external campaigns or suppliers.

Accessible and Inclusive reporting as an accountability measure

The report also highlights the importance of transparency and reporting on disability inclusion and accessibility, although these remain among the less widely adopted practices globally.

For example, the Index assessed whether annual reports include workforce disability participation, representation or self-identification statistics. Globally, only 31% of participating organisations reported doing so. In APAC, however, adoption reached 51%, highlighting significant regional differences in how some disability inclusion practices are being implemented.

Importantly, the Index looked beyond what organisations report to consider the accessibility of the reports themselves.

There were substantial regional differences. In Asia-Pacific the figure was 65%, while Latin America reported 80%. North America was below the global figure at 47%.

For organisations publishing annual reports, sustainability reports and other significant corporate documents, accessibility should be considered part of the publishing process rather than something addressed only after a document has been released.

This means starting with an accessible source document, maintaining appropriate document structure and reading order, providing text alternatives for meaningful visual content, ensuring sufficient contrast, and testing the final PDF or digital publication for accessibility.

An organisation's public commitment to disability inclusion is also considerably more credible when the report containing that commitment is itself accessible to people with disability.

Accessibility needs to work internally 

The report also highlights an easily overlooked aspect of digital accessibility: employees need to be able to access the organisation's own systems, policies and processes.

For example, 83% of organisations globally reported having a disability accommodation or workplace adjustment policy posted somewhere accessible to all employees, including employees using technologies such as screen readers or switch controls.

However, the Asia-Pacific result was only 61%.

An accessibility program therefore cannot focus exclusively on customer-facing websites and applications. Intranets, HR platforms, learning systems, collaboration tools, internal documents and employee processes can be equally important.

If an employee needs an adjustment but cannot independently access the information explaining how to request one, the accessibility of the process itself has become a barrier.

Testing with people with disability remains critical

Another particularly important inclusion in the new Marketing and Communications category is usability testing with people with disability and their assistive technology.

Technical conformance testing against standards such as WCAG remains fundamental, but it cannot always tell an organisation how successfully someone can complete a task.   

Testing with people with disability can identify barriers that may not be obvious from technical testing alone, including confusing interactions, difficult workflows, inaccessible third-party components and processes that technically conform but remain difficult to use.

The report's conclusion makes a similar point at a broader level: the technologies shaping the future of business need to be informed by the perspectives and lived experiences of people with disability.

The AI Factor

The report identifies artificial intelligence and digital transformation as major forces reshaping the future of work.

Its 2027 benchmark is expected to expand further into AI governance and accessibility, neuroinclusion and accessible product design.

For organisations rapidly introducing AI into customer experiences, employee systems and development processes, there is an important lesson here.

Accessibility cannot be something organisations intend to add once these technologies mature.

Accessibility requirements need to be considered when AI systems are selected, procured, designed, tested and governed. People with disability should also be included in research and testing so organisations can understand how new technologies behave across different ways of interacting with digital systems.

In addition, while AI can support accessibility auditing and testing, it cannot replace the need for manual testing, including testing with assistive technologies and people with disability, or the human expertise required to effectively remediate accessibility barriers.

Moving toward accessibility maturity

Perhaps the most useful lesson from the 2026 Disability Index is that individual, ad hoc accessibility activities are not enough. There needs to be a move toward a level of accessibility maturity across all systems, platforms and areas of work.

Organisations looking to strengthen their digital accessibility maturity can consider how accessibility is embedded into governance and accountability, procurement and supplier management, marketing and communications, digital content, internal systems and processes, accessibility testing and remediation, and ongoing measurement and reporting. 

Looking ahead, the report also points to product design and AI governance as increasingly important areas for accessibility and disability inclusion.

Organisations looking to strengthen their digital accessibility maturity should consider whether accessibility is built into:

• governance and organisational accountability
• digital product design and development
• procurement and supplier management
• marketing and communications
• document and content publishing
• employee technology and internal processes
• accessibility testing and remediation
• usability research with people with disability
• AI and emerging technology governance
• ongoing measurement and reporting

The goal is to move from fixing individual accessibility problems to creating an organisation in which fewer barriers are introduced in the first place.

The 2026 Disability Index suggests that this is increasingly where disability inclusion is heading. As technology becomes more deeply embedded into every part of business, digital accessibility will increasingly depend on whether organisations treat it as an isolated technical requirement or as a capability embedded throughout the organisation.

For businesses looking ahead, the opportunity is to embed accessibility into the systems, products and processes being developed today, avoiding the significant cost, time and complexity of retrofitting accessibility later.