Selo de Usabilidade e Acessibilidade — Portugal's Three-Tier Certification, With Gold Requiring Usability Tests Including Disabled Users

The Selo de Usabilidade e Acessibilidade is a voluntary certification run by Portugal's Agência para a Reforma Tecnológica do Estado (ARTE), aimed at public-sector bodies covered by Decree-Law 83/2018 and some private organisations. It also serves as a pedagogical tool.
Bronze requires automated evaluation showing no WCAG 2.1 AA violations plus two checklists (ten critical functional accessibility aspects, and content). Silver adds a transactions checklist. Gold adds a usability test report with six participants — four with disabilities and two without — documenting task success rates, efficiency, barriers and recommendations. Seals are valid for 12 months and renewable.
Public bodies display it: for example autenticacao.gov.pt and the Mais Transparência site are reported as Gold-certified.
What is missing: the programme documentation we found gives no total number of certified sites and no outcome data on whether certification improved access for disabled users. Its distinctive design feature is that the top tier cannot be reached by automated checks alone and requires testing with people with disabilities. It is therefore listed as a promising institutional design rather than a proven one.

Read the full analysis: https://amagovpt.github.io/kit-selo/