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Good practice Imported

Greece's Three-Cycle Digital Accessibility Monitoring (2021–2024) — a Persistent 90% Accessibility-Statement Gap

Greece · Athens · See the Greece profile · See the Athens profile

Evidence: Observational / pre–post Top 31% 84/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Greece's Ministry of Digital Governance compared three EU-mandated monitoring cycles (2021–2024) covering 404 to 451 public-sector sites and apps. Up to 90% lacked a valid accessibility statement in every cycle, while PDF checks and audit scope expanded year on year.

404 sites/apps
Public-sector sites/apps audited (2021-2022) (2021-2022)
443 sites/apps
Public-sector sites/apps audited (2022-2023) (2022-2023)
451 sites/apps
Public-sector sites/apps audited (2023-2024) (2023-2024)
up to 90 %
Sites lacking a valid accessibility statement (each cycle, 2021-2024)
31.61 %
'Link Purpose (in Context)' infringement rate (2023-2024)
29.39 %
'Non-Text Content' infringement rate (2023-2024)

Details

Maturity
Established
Promoter
Ministry of Digital Governance, with the National Accessibility Authority
Period
2021–2024
Keywords
digital government, web accessibility, disability inclusion, public sector IT

Context

Under EU Directive 2016/2102 and standard EN 301 549 v3.2.1, Greece's Ministry of Digital Governance, supported since 2021 by the National Accessibility Authority (set up under Law 4780/2021), ran simplified and in-depth accessibility monitoring of public-sector websites and mobile apps across three consecutive cycles: 2021-2022, 2022-2023 and 2023-2024.

Activities

The audited sample grew from 404 sites/apps to 443 and then 451 across the three cycles; PDF document checks were added from 2022-2023 (31 audits, extended to 29 in 2023-2024).

Results

Across all three cycles, 85-90% of infringements concerned the Perceivable, Operable and Robust principles, and up to 90% of audited sites lacked a compliant accessibility statement in every period. The most frequent infringements in the latest cycle were 'Link Purpose (in Context)' (31.61%), 'Non-Text Content' (29.39%), 'Info and Relationships' (15.07%) and 'Parsing' (13.39%).

Conclusions

The Ministry's own cross-cycle analysis is candid that 'despite gradual improvements, key challenges in digital accessibility persist,' singling out the systematic absence of accessibility statements and continuing PDF weaknesses; the findings fed directly into Greece's National Strategy for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities 2024-2030.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Medium (€50k–€500k)
Time to results
Medium (1–3 years) — Three consecutive cycles: 2021-2022, 2022-2023, 2023-2024; findings feed into the National Strategy for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities 2024-2030.
Staffing & skills
Ministry of Digital Governance, National Accessibility Authority (established under Law 4780/2021)

Conditions for success

  • A statutory legal mandate (EU Directive 2016/2102) and technical standard (EN 301 549) behind the monitoring
  • A dedicated permanent authority carrying the audits forward across cycles
  • Progressively widening audit scope (sample size and added PDF checks) year on year

Common failure modes

  • Persistent near-90% absence of compliant accessibility statements across all three cycles despite gradual improvement elsewhere
  • Continuing weaknesses in PDF document accessibility

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes ESF+ — European Social Fund Plus

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

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