Portugal's Selo de Usabilidade e Acessibilidade — Gold Tier Requires Testing with Disabled Users

Since 2022, Portugal's Agência para a Modernização Administrativa (AMA) and Instituto Nacional para a Reabilitação (INR) have run the Selo de Usabilidade e Acessibilidade (Seal of Usability and Accessibility), a three-tier public-sector certification — Bronze, Silver and Gold — built on top of the country's WCAG-based Decree-Law 83/2018 accessibility obligations.
The Gold tier is the only one that requires direct evidence of inclusive design: applicants must commission usability tests with real users — explicitly including people with disabilities or incapacity — document the findings in a report, and show that every recommendation was implemented before the seal is granted. Municipalities such as Valongo and the CIM Região de Aveiro intermunicipal community were among the first to reach Gold, by July 2024.
Adoption is growing but still small: the number of seals held roughly doubled from 16 to 38 between December 2022 and December 2024, while the number of published accessibility declarations quintupled over the same window. Fewer than 10% of public bodies that publish an accessibility declaration go on to seek the seal, and the government's own target — 90% of Portuguese public websites holding the seal by the end of 2026 — remains far off, illustrating both the promise and the limits of a voluntary certification layered on top of a legal mandate.

Read the full analysis: https://selo.usabilidade.gov.pt/