Diia's Digital Accessibility Competence Centre — Institutionalising Inclusive Design in Ukraine's e-Government Platform

Ukraine made web accessibility mandatory for state bodies under a standard that took effect in 2022, but implementation lagged: as of 2023 the flagship Diia e-government portal met only two of ten basic digital-accessibility criteria.
In 2024 the Ministry of Digital Transformation and the State Enterprise Diia, working with UNDP Ukraine under the Sweden-funded 'Digital, Inclusive, Accessible' (DIA) Support Project, opened Ukraine's first state-level Digital Accessibility Competence Centre. The Centre reworked Diia's public-facing services with correct screen-reader labels, higher-contrast text, visible keyboard-focus indicators, properly pronounced audio error messages and accessible PDF documents, completing the citizen-facing account section by 3 December 2025. It also produced an official Ukrainian translation of WCAG 2.1.
To build capacity beyond the Centre itself, the programme runs a Web Accessibility Academy for civil servants: its first cohort, 21 officials from eight regions including Kharkiv, Kherson and Luhansk, graduated in June 2026 after a mix of webinars and in-person training in Kyiv. Over the past five years, more than 5,000 representatives of state and local government across nearly half of Ukraine's regions have completed basic web-accessibility training.
A draft law approved by the Cabinet of Ministers in late 2025 would extend the accessibility mandate from state bodies to the private sector, though as with any wartime reform its funding and timeline depend on continued donor support.

Read the full analysis: https://accessibility.diia.gov.ua/