Ísland.is — Iceland's Award-Winning Digital Government Portal and Its Still-Unenacted Accessibility Law

Ísland.is, run by Stafrænt Ísland (Digital Iceland) under Iceland's Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs, is the country's single sign-on portal for accessing government information, applying for public services, and tracking applications. In 2023 it received a World Summit Award in the Government & Citizen Engagement category; the WSA jury cited the platform's efficiency gains (less paper, less travel, faster processing) and its "high level of accessibility regardless of location or disability."
The platform's accessibility guidelines — first published in 2008 and updated in 2012 and 2014 — commit to WCAG Level AA compliance as a baseline (with Level AAA "as many respects as possible") and assign accessibility responsibilities to managers, designers and developers alike. The team uses Siteimprove, WAVE and aXe to test for issues affecting blind and low-vision users, people who are deaf, people with dyslexia, people with physical disabilities, older users, and users of assistive devices.
In October 2012, the Icelandic government announced plans to legislate mandatory WCAG 2.0 AA compliance for public-sector websites by January 2015. As of the most recent available reporting (2023), that legislation still had not been enacted, leaving compliance a matter of policy and internal guidance rather than binding law. No independent compliance audit or accessibility-score data for Ísland.is is publicly available, so its evaluation evidence rests on the WSA jury's qualitative review rather than a measured conformance score.

Read the full analysis: https://island.is/en/o/digital-iceland/accessibility