Portugal's Decree-Law 83/2018 — Mandatory Web & App Accessibility with EU-Reported Audits

Portugal's Decree-Law No. 83/2018 transposed EU Directive 2016/2102 into national law, requiring the websites and mobile apps of public-sector bodies to meet WCAG-based accessibility requirements and naming the Agência para a Modernização Administrativa (AMA) as the authority responsible for monitoring compliance and reporting results to the European Commission every three years.
AMA runs recurring monitoring campaigns against public-sector sites and apps, and organisations that fail an evaluation receive formal requirements to adapt; results are published in reports AMA submits to Brussels alongside the other EU and EEA states carrying out the same Directive-mandated exercise, making Portugal's figures directly comparable across the bloc.
AMA's 2022/2024 monitoring report found that contrast-ratio failures - text or interface elements without sufficient colour contrast for low-vision users - were present on over 88% of the websites and 80% of the individual web pages audited, the single most common defect identified. That figure is a candid measure of how far implementation still lags the law's requirements, even six years after the Decree-Law took effect, and is exactly the kind of longitudinal, government-published compliance data that is rare among national accessibility mandates.

Read the full analysis: https://www.acessibilidade.gov.pt/blogue/categoria-noticias/dl-n-o-83-2018-acessibilidade-dos-sitios-web-e-das-aplicacoes-moveis/