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Joe Devon doesn’t treat digital accessibility as a footnote in tech development. He presents it as a foundational flaw in the internet’s architecture, one that has been quietly ignored by the mainstream for far too long. And he should know. Fourteen years ago, he wrote a blog post that would become the spark behind Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD), now observed on May 15th in over 20 countries and counting. Just one post, one idea, then a global ripple effect.
But Joe is not satisfied, because the gaps are still enormous. Accessibility, to him, is a matter of professional pride. If you design a red and green toggle without a label, someone with colour blindness sees two identical blobs. That’s not a minor oversight, it’s failure of design. “You should be embarrassed,” he says plainly. “You didn’t do your job well.”
GAAD has always been about raising awareness, but Joe wants the conversation to move beyond surface-level empathy. He wants culture change. He wants web developers, designers, product leads, all of them, to see accessibility not as a costly add-on, but as a mark of quality and future relevance. The internet is ageing, after all. And so are its users.
For businesses just starting to think about accessibility, his advice is deceptively simple: try using your own website with nothing but a keyboard. No mouse. No shortcuts. Can you complete a form? Buy a product? Navigate clearly? If not, you’ve already excluded someone. Maybe many someones.
While GAAD began as a blog post, today, it’s a global movement. And while Joe isn’t interested in taking centre stage, the work he’s doing, quietly, relentlessly, is shaping the web’s future. One line of code, one question, one collaboration, one refusal to accept “good enough.”
Devon, who has been at the forefront of digital accessibility advocacy for more than a decade, is also the originator of a foundational body of research, the State of Accessibility Reports (SOAR). These studies, which began with a focus on the web, eventually pointed to a glaring blind spot: mobile apps. “We realized mobile apps were a missing piece of the puzzle,” Devon noted. As a spin off from that report and with Devon in a consultant role, ArcTouch, in collaboration with real assistive technology users with disabilities and lived experiences who tested the apps from Fable, prepared The 2025 State of Mobile App Accessibility Report (SOMAA) which offers a comprehensive snapshot of how well native mobile applications across five key industries are meeting the needs of users with disabilities. The report evaluated 50 widely-used apps against 14 accessibility criteria using four assistive technologies, revealing widespread gaps and opportunities for inclusive design.
For businesses just starting to think about accessibility, his advice is deceptively simple: try using your own website with nothing but a keyboard. No mouse. No shortcuts. Can you complete a form? Buy a product? Navigate clearly? If not, you’ve already excluded someone. Maybe many someones.
While GAAD began as a blog post, today, it’s a global movement. And while Joe isn’t interested in taking centre stage, the work he’s doing, quietly, relentlessly, is shaping the web’s future. One line of code, one question, one collaboration, one refusal to accept “good enough.”
Devon, who has been at the forefront of digital accessibility advocacy for more than a decade, is also the originator of a foundational body of research, the State of Accessibility Reports (SOAR). These studies, which began with a focus on the web, eventually pointed to a glaring blind spot: mobile apps. “We realized mobile apps were a missing piece of the puzzle,” Devon noted. As a spin off from that report and with Devon in a consultant role, ArcTouch, in collaboration with real assistive technology users with disabilities and lived experiences who tested the apps from Fable, prepared The 2025 State of Mobile App Accessibility Report (SOMAA) which offers a comprehensive snapshot of how well native mobile applications across five key industries are meeting the needs of users with disabilities. The report evaluated 50 widely-used apps against 14 accessibility criteria using four assistive technologies, revealing widespread gaps and opportunities for inclusive design.
“I thought things would’ve improved more,” Devon admits. Out of the 50 top apps, only two achieved strong accessibility scores. And the worst offenders? Shopping platforms, the very apps designed to take people’s money. “It’s not even about innovation, he says. It’s oversight. Or worse, indifference.”
The SOMAA report paints a sobering picture. Nearly three-quarters (72%) of app user journeys tested across five essential industries: food delivery, payments, fitness, shopping, and streaming delivered either a poor or outright failing experience for people with disabilities. With the shopping industry, despite its obvious commercial incentives, coming in with the lowest overall score, the report authors write: “If a user can’t successfully shop in an e-commerce app, then that app has failed its primary purpose.” Sadly, that failure has consequences far beyond the checkout screen.
“There are lots of unlabeled buttons,” said one Fable tester. “Image descriptions are barely enough to indicate that it could be a product.” Without something as simple as a properly labeled button, blind and low-vision users are effectively locked out. Customers with access needs would spend more if digital experiences were more accessible. That translates to a massive, missed opportunity: trillions of dollars left on the table by brands that treat accessibility as an afterthought.
This is a recurring theme in the user interviews that accompanied the SOMAA report: frustration and hope. In one transcript, a Fable tester put it bluntly: “I had to struggle so much with just trying to input my payment information. If the app can’t get that basic interaction right, I just delete it. I’m done.” Another explained: “I use Voice Control on iOS because of limited mobility in my hands. Half the time, the app doesn’t respond properly or skips buttons. It’s exhausting.”
For ArcTouch’s Head of Accessibility, Ben Ogilvie, that feedback is exactly the point. “Native components and tools provide a foundation,” he says. “But you still need to build the rest of the house, the complete user experience, with accessibility in mind.” That user experience is where so many apps fall short. The SOMAA report tested four key assistive technologies across 50 top-ranked iOS and Android apps: screen readers, alternate navigation, font scaling, and orientation. And across the board, orientation support, which allows users to view content in both portrait and landscape modes, was dismally low. Average cross-industry support scored an 8 out of 100.
That’s more than an oversight. For users, it’s a barrier to access. Despite progress in awareness, accessibility remains siloed. It’s either bolted on at the end of development or handled by a single compliance specialist instead of being embedded in the design process from the start. And that’s a mistake. One of the biggest myths is that accessibility is expensive or difficult, but it’s not if you plan for it from the beginning. However, it can be expensive if you have to retrofit everything later. Users must also be involved. You cannot design accessible experiences in a vacuum. You need to test it with real users who rely on assistive technologies. And not just once, continuously.
Ben Ogilvie believes automated tools will catch some problems, but added, “Only real-world testing shows you whether your app actually works for someone trying to use it with a screen reader or voice control.”
As for the broader regulatory landscape, the report highlights a coming wave of enforcement, particularly in Europe. The European Accessibility Act (EAA), due to take effect on June 28, 2025, expands requirements beyond public sector websites to include private sector services like e-commerce, banking, and transport, and unlike many earlier regulations, it explicitly includes native apps in its scope. That means brands with global reach must pay attention or face legal and reputational risk.
Joe Devon believes there’s hope. “AI has the potential to simplify the process of building accessible apps and websites,” he explained. “But that still requires a commitment from brand leaders and product builders to support digital accessibility. Take the lessons from the SOMAA report. Understand the opportunity, not just to do what’s right, but to do what’s best for your business and brand.”
Devon’s own journey, from blog post to global movement, is proof that accessibility doesn’t start with perfection. It starts with intention, and with listening. “Reports like these help us look at the big picture. I’ve seen accessibility experts so focused on the minutia that they miss the larger goal: improving the percentage of accessible applications,” he noted.
And then there’s AI, the ever-expanding frontier. Joe’s excited about its potential, especially in assistive technology. Screen reading, audio description, real-time guidance for navigating visual content, all powered by tools that are improving at a breakneck pace. But he’s equally clear-eyed about the danger: if accessibility is once again treated as an afterthought, the AI revolution will widen the digital divide even further. So, in collaboration with ServiceNow, they are working on an open-source AI accessibility conformance tool to launch in May.
“Accessibility used to be an afterthought. We can’t afford that with Gen AI moving so fast,” ServiceNow’s Eamon McErlean said. “The tool will check for missing alt text, tab order, ARIA usage, document language, the fundamentals,” he explained. “Importantly, it will be LLM-agnostic, making it available for any organization to evaluate accessibility in their AI-generated code.” He continued, “It is open-source, no cost. And we want companies to take it, run with it, and improve it collaboratively.” But tools alone aren’t enough. ServiceNow also maintains an internal accessibility panel of nearly 250 employees, people with disabilities and champions of inclusive design. “We solicit their feedback on new features before release. It’s been invaluable,” he shared.
McErlean is also proud of practical innovations: force colors, dark themes, custom keyboard shortcuts, and real-time accessibility checkers built into the platform. “Customers can check their theme or app conformance before publishing. It helps scale accessibility across the board.”
Still, challenges persist. The platform’s extreme customizability means clients can introduce inaccessible components unintentionally. “It’s a double-edged sword,” McErlean admitted. That’s why built-in checkers and ongoing customer education are critical. So too is the input and feedback of real users. It might seem like a long, tedious process, and that can make anyone hesitate. But it all starts with a simple truth: “If you build tech without considering people with disabilities, you’ve built it wrong,” McErlean said forcefully. And if you’re a tech company still treating accessibility like an annual compliance chore, Eamon’s advice is simple: “Start earlier, bake it into your design and get real users in the room. Let them break your shiny prototype before it breaks someone else’s experience.”
Through the work of these companies and organizations, we are reminded that accessibility goes beyond checkboxes and code, it centers on people. It means recognizing the individual on the other side of the screen and choosing to care, to include, and to make them feel seen and valued. Let this be a call to all of us: to build with empathy, to design with intention, and to ensure no one is left behind.