On 21 May 2026, Global Accessibility Awareness Day, Cigref published its new report entitled “Digital accessibility: organising, managing and equipping large organisations for scaling up”. The result of a year’s work, this document sets out a methodological framework and practical feedback to transform a regulatory obligation into an organisation-wide project.
We have taken the utmost care to make this report accessible to as many people as possible, in line with current digital accessibility best practice. Despite our best efforts, some limitations may remain. If you experience any difficulty accessing all or part of this document, please contact us so that we can provide the information in a format tailored to your needs.
Ce rapport est disponible en français (French version).
Why is digital accessibility a strategic issue in 2026?
Accessibility is an essential means of ensuring the autonomy of every employee, user and citizen, by guaranteeing them the fundamental right to equal access to information, as well as to digital services and products.
The strengthening of the legal framework has marked a turning point in digital practices, particularly since the French transposition of the European Accessibility Act (EAA) came into force in June 2025. Far from being merely a budgetary constraint, digital accessibility is, moreover, a source of opportunities:
- Competitiveness: It helps capture a ‘hidden market’ representing, according to some organisations, up to 20% of potential users (people with disabilities, carers, and seniors).
- Quality and SEO: accessible code is clean, more streamlined code, which promotes better organic search engine optimisation and greater interoperability.
- Inclusion and CSR: it strengthens the employer brand and ensures equitable access to information and services for all employees and clients.
The four key pillars for a successful scale-up
1. Structured governance
Success depends on governance involving, at a minimum, three parties (CIO – CSR – Compliance), with a multi-year strategy or plan, and the appointment of a Digital Accessibility Lead reporting at a senior level (Executive Committee) to ensure genuine decision-making authority.
2. Management throughout the entire project lifecycle
Accessibility cannot be improvised and must be considered throughout the entire project lifecycle, particularly from the scoping stage onwards, to avoid massive additional costs for remediation prior to deployment. It relies in particular on:
- Legacy management, involving a balance between patches and complete overhauls with the aim of harmonising the level of accessibility across digital assets.
- Integration by design of digital accessibility into procurement, business and project support processes.
- Long-term management, through audits, testing, the use of external expertise and testing with end users, particularly those with disabilities.
3. Empowerment through training and cultural change
Accessibility must be able to involve all stakeholders, from business teams to suppliers, through a process of cultural assimilation and the sustainable transformation of organisational culture. This involves, amongst other things, awareness-raising programmes and training tailored to each role (developers, designers, copywriters, procurement officers) and the integration of accessibility into the onboarding of new staff.
Scaling up and standardising the accessibility of services can be facilitated by the development of a framework, or “design system”. Finally, monitoring through metrics and the ability to demonstrate ROI remain key differentiators.
4. Actionable principles for scaling up
This report provides teams with a set of immediately actionable deliverables: a KPI dashboard to steer and monitor the initiative’s progress over time, identified bottlenecks and solutions, and prioritised projects for the accessibility initiative, grounded in feedback from the field.
“This report demonstrates that accessibility is no longer an isolated initiative, but a collective endeavour that is essential to our organisations.” – Yannick Puget, iMSA, Working Group Lead.
