Beyond compliance: Turning accessibility into a growth engine with AI

The business case for accessibility

Over 1.3 billion people globally live with some form of disability. With nearly one in six people navigating the world differently, accessibility is a baseline requirement for scale, not a special feature. And as digital experiences become the primary way consumers interact with brands, the ability to reach everyone has become both a competitive advantage and a regulatory requirement.

For product and marketing leaders, the question is no longer whether to prioritize accessible experiences, but how to operationalize accessibility at scale without slowing down your team.

The regulatory landscape: What you need to know

Europe: The European Accessibility Act (EAA)

The European Accessibility Act took effect on June 28, 2025, establishing unified accessibility requirements across all EU member states. Before the EAA, accessibility rules varied by country, creating a patchwork of requirements that made compliance difficult to manage. Now, there’s a single standard – and it applies broadly.

The EAA covers most consumer-facing digital products and services: apps, websites, e-commerce platforms, streaming services, banking, transportation, and more. To comply with the EAA, businesses must meet the EN 301 549 standard, which essentially mirrors the well-known WCAG 2.1 AA requirements. This means requirements around screen reader compatibility, proper color contrast ratios, alternative text for images, and logical content structure.

Each EU member state determines its own enforcement mechanisms and penalties, so brands operating across multiple countries need to stay informed on country-specific implementation.

United States: A complex and evolving landscape

The U.S. accessibility landscape is more fragmented than Europe’s – but no less consequential. Multiple overlapping requirements at the federal, state, and private litigation levels create a web of obligations that many companies underestimate.

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA): What businesses need to know

The ADA is a federal civil rights law that prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities. Originally passed in 1990 to address physical barriers – think wheelchair ramps and accessible parking – courts and regulators have increasingly applied it to digital experiences as well. 

There are two parts of the ADA that matter for digital accessibility: Title II for public institutions and Title III for private businesses serving the public. Regardless of whether your organization falls under Title II or Title III, federal mandates and court rulings are converging on a single, non-negotiable benchmark: WCAG 2.1 Level AA.

The practical takeaway: if your company operates a website or app that customers use to browse products, make purchases, book appointments, or access services, you may be subject to ADA requirements – even if you don’t have a physical storefront.

The litigation surge

The numbers tell a stark story. In 2024, over 4,000 ADA website accessibility lawsuits were filed in federal and state courts. In the first half of 2025 alone, more than 2,000 lawsuits were filed – a 37% increase compared to the same period in 2024.  E-commerce companies are the primary target, accounting for 69% of all digital accessibility lawsuits in 2025.  

State-by-state regulations

Adding to the complexity, there’s no single, clear federal standard for how the ADA applies to websites and mobile apps. Federal courts across the country have taken different approaches, and the rules can vary significantly depending on where a lawsuit is filed.

Some courts require plaintiffs to show a connection between the website and a physical store or location. Others have ruled that any website offering goods or services to the public – including online-only businesses – can be subject to ADA requirements.

This patchwork of interpretations creates real uncertainty for businesses. A website that might not face legal exposure in one part of the country could be vulnerable to litigation in another. And increasingly, plaintiffs are filing cases in state courts – particularly in plaintiff-friendly jurisdictions – where accessibility claims may receive more favorable treatment.

The bottom line for business leaders

Whether you’re serving customers in the EU, the U.S., or globally, the direction is clear: accessibility standards are becoming more stringent, more unified, and more actively enforced. The litigation environment in the U.S. is particularly aggressive, with plaintiffs targeting companies of all sizes across multiple industries. Brands that get ahead of these requirements position themselves for broader market reach and reduced legal risk. Those that don’t risk alienating a significant customer segment – and facing regulatory consequences or costly litigation.

The operational challenge

Here’s the reality for most marketing and product teams: accessibility is complex. WCAG 2.1 AA alone contains dozens of success criteria covering everything from color contrast ratios (4.5:1 for normal text, 3:1 for large text) to proper heading hierarchies to descriptive alternative text for every meaningful image.

Operationalizing these checks is time-consuming and error-prone. Teams often don’t have deep accessibility expertise, and manual reviews can delay campaign launches. Accessibility frequently becomes a late-stage checklist item rather than a built-in part of the creation process – which means issues get caught (if at all) when they’re most expensive to fix.

Introducing the Airship Accessibility Agent

This is why we built the Airship Accessibility Agent: to shift accessibility from a bottleneck to a built-in workflow.

The Accessibility Agent is an AI-powered assistant that works directly within the Scenes editor, reviewing content as you build it. Rather than waiting for a post-launch audit to discover issues, the Accessibility Agent proactively identifies potential accessibility gaps and provides clear, actionable recommendations.

What the Accessibility Agent does

• Identifies missing accessibility elements: Flags content that lacks alternative text, content descriptions, or input labels
• Checks color contrast: Alerts you when text and background combinations don’t meet recommended contrast ratios, with suggestions for fixes
• Reviews content structure: Identifies when headings are missing or improperly structured, helping ensure screen readers can navigate your content logically
• Flags text sizing issues: Warns when text falls below recommended minimums for readability
• Detects image-only content: Alerts you when a Scene consists entirely of an image (which may contain embedded text inaccessible to screen readers), recommending you build content natively instead

The Accessibility Agent moves you instantly from detection to resolution by surfacing specific, one-step fixes that require only your final sign-off to deploy.

Why native matters

Airship Scenes are native experiences, not HTML-based web views. This is a meaningful distinction for accessibility. Native content integrates directly with the accessibility tools built into iOS, Android, and web operating systems – think screen readers like VoiceOver, TalkBack, and keyboard navigation – without requiring additional development work to bridge the gap.

HTML-based in-app experiences, by contrast, don’t inherently adopt native accessibility features. This can create inconsistent experiences for users who rely on assistive technologies and often requires developer intervention to address.

By building accessibility support directly into our native Scenes editor, we can provide more robust semantic tagging, screen reader compatibility, and keyboard navigation out of the box. 

Getting started

By prioritizing inclusive design, marketing teams unlock a wider addressable market and drive higher retention, proving that good ethics is also good business. With the Accessibility Agent, Airship makes it easier for marketing and product teams to build accessibility into their process from the start, rather than treating it as an afterthought.

Ready to learn more about how Airship can support your accessibility efforts? Connect with our team to see the Accessibility Agent in action.

Want to dive deeper into the European Accessibility Act and its implications for customer experience? Read our full guide: Is Your Customer Experience Strategy Ready for the European Accessibility Act?