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Good practice Imported

Luxembourg's Open-Data Accessibility Monitoring — Six Years of Published Audits, and Only 2 of ~900 Services Compliant

Luxembourg · Luxembourg · See the Luxembourg profile · See the Luxembourg profile

Evidence: Observational / pre–post Top 9% 96/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

SIP publishes every accessibility audit, sample and complaint as open data on data.public.lu. Average site compliance rose from 44% (2021) to 61% (2024) — yet only 2 of ~900 in-scope services are fully compliant, and app compliance fell 49%→37% in three years.

44%
Website compliance, in-depth audits (2021)
61%
Website compliance, in-depth audits (2024)
63%
Sites above 50% compliance threshold (2024)
2 of ~900 in-scope
Services fully compliant (2024)
49%
Mobile app compliance (2022)
37%
Mobile app compliance (2024)
8 of 20 (2022-2024)
Complaints resulting in a short-term fix
Luxembourg's Open-Data Accessibility Monitoring — Six Years of Published Audits, and Only 2 of ~900 Services Compliant

Details

Maturity
Established
Promoter
Service information et presse (SIP), Government of Luxembourg
Period
2020–2025
Region (NUTS)
LU00
Keywords
digital accessibility, e-government, open data, disability inclusion, monitoring, enforcement

Context

Luxembourg's law of 28 May 2019 brought around 900 public-sector websites and mobile apps into scope for digital accessibility. The Service information et presse (SIP) has monitored them since 2020, auditing against the RAWeb and RAAM frameworks in line with EU implementing decision 2018/1524.

Objectives

Rather than keeping audit results internal, SIP set out to publish the entire monitoring apparatus — full and simplified audits, the in-scope inventory, sampling frames, accessibility statements and complaint history — as open data, making the programme independently checkable.

Activities

SIP publishes around ten datasets under CC0 or attribution licences on data.public.lu and presents results through a public Digital Accessibility Observatory. From June 2025, supervisory/enforcement powers were transferred to a newly created office (OSAPS), separating enforcement from SIP's monitoring function.

Results

Average website compliance rose from 44% (2021) to 61% (2024) in in-depth audits, and from 55% to 61% in simplified audits; 63% of audited sites cleared the 50% threshold in 2024. Yet only 2 of roughly 900 in-scope services were fully compliant in 2024 (both SIP's own sites), mobile app compliance fell for three straight years (49% in 2022, 43% in 2023, 37% in 2024, with no app reaching even partial compliance in 2024), and only 8 of 20 complaints filed 2022-2024 produced a short-term fix.

Conclusions

A small state can run a credible, fully open monitoring regime cheaply, but transparency alone does not produce compliance — six years of published audits left almost none of the ~900 in-scope services fully accessible, which is the argument for pairing publication with an enforcement body that has teeth.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Low (< €50k) — Small in-house SIP monitoring team running statutory audits against existing RAWeb/RAAM frameworks and publishing to an existing open-data portal — a small state runs this credibly and cheaply, per the source's own conclusion.
Time to results
Medium (1–3 years) — Statutory since the 2019 law, operational since 2020, with a further enforcement-office transition (OSAPS) from June 2025 — a multi-year institutional build-out.
Staffing & skills
Service information et presse (SIP) monitoring team, new oversight office OSAPS (from June 2025) handling enforcement

Conditions for success

  • publish full audit microdata as open data (CC0/attribution) on a public portal, not just summary reports
  • separate the monitoring function from enforcement powers
  • use existing EU frameworks (RAWeb/RAAM) aligned with EU implementing decision 2018/1524

Common failure modes

  • publishing audits alone did not drive compliance — after 6 years only 2 of ~900 services were fully compliant and mobile app compliance fell for three straight years
  • weak complaint redress: only 8 of 20 complaints (2022-2024) produced a short-term fix
  • original statutory deadlines (Sept 2020 for websites, June 2021 for apps) were missed

Where it fits

Governance type
national government agency (statutory mandate)
Scale
national — ~900 public-sector websites and apps
Income level
high-income (Luxembourg)

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes Digital Europe Programme

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Data sources

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