Abstract-Technology & AccessiWay Partnership: Streamlining European Accessibility Act (EAA) Compliance for Open edX

Why We're Partnering with AccessiWay

A new strategic collaboration to help organisations meet the European Accessibility Act (EAA) - through specialised training, targeted accessibility audits, code-level remediation, and ongoing legal support for WCAG compliance

The regulatory reality has shifted

The European Accessibility Act (EAA) is now fully in force. For a very large share of organisations operating in the EU, digital accessibility has moved out of the "good practice" category and into the "legal obligation" category. Websites, mobile applications, and digital documents are now expected to comply with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1 and WCAG 2.2) and the harmonised European standard EN 301 549, and regulators are no longer treating this as a soft objective.

The market for web accessibility has accelerated significantly, and the risks for non-compliant companies are very real. Across Europe, national authorities are stepping up enforcement, running structured audits, and applying penalties where they find gaps. The recent landmark fine imposed on Carrefour for the inaccessibility of its digital channels is one of the clearest signals so far: authorities are actively conducting strict audits, non-compliance carries heavy financial penalties, and litigation risk is a serious downstream consequence.

For organisations still operating on the assumption that accessibility compliance can be deferred to "next year's roadmap," the timeline has effectively closed. The right question is no longer whether to act, but how to structure the work - technically, organisationally, and legally - so that compliance is achieved once and then maintained over time.

This is the context in which we're announcing our strategic partnership with AccessiWay, a European specialist in digital accessibility.

Why we chose AccessiWay

There is no shortage of vendors offering accessibility consulting today. What makes AccessiWay the right partner for our client network is not marketing language - it is a specific, verifiable profile in a field where credentials genuinely matter.

• Active collaboration with the W3C. The World Wide Web Consortium is the body that defines the WCAG standards themselves. Working alongside the organisation that writes the rules is a materially different position from simply applying them.
• Membership in IAAP. The International Association of Accessibility Professionals is the reference body for accessibility practitioners globally. It sets the professional standards the industry uses to distinguish qualified specialists from generalists.
• Trainers certified under UNI 11506:2021. This is the Italian national standard for the qualification of ICT professionals, aligned with the European e-Competence Framework. Certification under this standard is a formal, third-party attestation of professional competence - not a self-declared qualification.
• A track record with public and private universities. AccessiWay has built a demonstrated footprint in the higher-education sector, which matters directly for our own client base: a significant part of our network sits in higher education, from Politecnico di Torino to the University of Bologna to the German University of Digital Science.
• Coaches who are certified accessibility experts and practice what they teach. The Academy's trainers are not academics distant from delivery - they are the same practitioners who run accessibility audits, write remediation plans, and support clients through the full accessibility compliance lifecycle.

AccessiWay founded its Academy to address what it identified as a critical gap in the European market: the absence of structured, practical education on digital accessibility. For AccessiWay, the Academy is framed explicitly as a mission - to build awareness, develop capability, and normalise digital inclusion. That framing aligns closely with how we position our own work in EdTech: not as vendor-driven delivery, but as long-term capacity building inside client organisations.

How the AccessiWay Academy works

The Academy operates on a seat-based model. The mechanics are worth understanding in detail because they shape how organisations can actually adopt it.

• Step 1 - Purchase seats. An organisation buys a defined number of seats. Each seat represents one attendance slot, and every seat is valid across the entire course catalogue. There is no requirement to commit up front to specific courses.
• Step 2 - Compose the learning path. Once seats are purchased, AccessiWay works with the organisation to select the courses that fit its actual needs - designers, developers, content creators, legal teams, customer service, managers. The path is composed jointly rather than sold as a fixed package.
• Step 3 - Unused seats are retained. Seats that are not consumed in the first wave of training are kept for future use. This is a practical detail with real consequences: when a new hire joins the team six months later, or when a project brings in freelancers who need to be brought up to standard, the seats are already available.

For organisations training mixed profiles over time - which is how accessibility compliance work almost always plays out in practice - this model is more sustainable than one-off training days that lose their effect within a quarter.

The Academy course catalogue

The catalogue covers nine courses, spanning foundational awareness to hands-on role-specific workshops. Below is the full picture, grouped by the type of role each course is designed to serve.

Foundation courses

• Accessibility & Disability Overview - 4 hours An orientation grounded in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (New York, 2006). Participants learn about different types of disability, their history, and the main assistive technologies that support daily life. The course also provides an overview of digital accessibility regulation - from authoritative international frameworks down to the internal guidelines that clarify obligations for the "deliverers" (the people inside an organisation who must incorporate accessibility into their processes). This is the recommended entry point for any team that has not previously received structured accessibility training.
• Legal Overview - 4 hours A focused summary of digital accessibility regulation, covering the mandatory accessibility statement, the concept of the digital divide, accessibility goals, and the consequences of default. Particularly useful for legal, compliance, and management functions who need a working command of the regulatory landscape without a full technical dive.

Technical courses

• IT Fundamentals for Accessibility - 8 hours (with a browser extension provided during the course) The most technical of the Academy's offerings. The course teaches the fundamental principles behind WCAG 2.1 AA - Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, Robust — and walks participants through the practical basics of building an accessible website: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, semantic HTML, and WAI-ARIA roles, properties, and states (ARIA labels). It also covers automatic, semi-automatic, and manual accessibility testing, with hands-on code exercises addressing keyboard navigation, screen reader compatibility, focus indicators, color contrast, and accessible forms. This is the course for front-end developers, QA engineers, and technical leads responsible for the code that ships.
• Accessible UX/UI Design - 6 hours An overview of accessible web design covering WCAG design principles, accessible UX patterns, accessible UI implementation, user testing methodology, and supporting documentation. The course teaches designers to integrate accessibility criteria at every stage of the project, rather than treating it as a review step at the end. Aimed at UX designers, UI designers, and product managers.

Content and communication courses

• General Content Creation - 4 hours Covers the best practices of accessible web and multimedia content design through a customisable methodology. The course addresses wording, social media, multimedia content (including alt text best practices), and the underlying laws and standards. Designed for anyone involved in producing digital content or managing website copy — including marketing teams, editorial teams, and community managers.
• Digital Customer Service - 4 hours Combines the disability overview, digital divide, and legal foundations with a specific focus on customer-facing interactions. Includes a workshop activity that puts the theoretical content into practice using simulated assistance requests. Aimed at customer service teams, sales support, and any function that handles inbound requests from users with disabilities.

Document-focused workshops

• Office Accessibility - 3 hours (Microsoft Office 365) A workshop module on creating accessible documents inside the Office suite. Participants learn to build accessible Word documents and to verify them, so that accessibility persists over time inside the organisation. Particularly relevant for copy editors, administrative staff, and anyone who produces or shares Word documents at scale.
• InDesign Accessibility Lab - 3 hours (InDesign) A hands-on workshop on producing accessible digital documents in InDesign. Aimed at design teams, publishing teams, and marketing production staff who create branded documents intended for external distribution.
• Acrobat Pro Lab - 4 hours (Microsoft Word & Acrobat Pro) A workshop focused on the creation of accessible PDF documents - one of the most common and most consistently mishandled document formats in enterprise environments. Aimed at anyone in the organisation responsible for producing or publishing PDFs..

Across the full catalogue, participants receive training content plus supporting materials to consolidate what they learn - the Academy is designed to leave a durable footprint inside the organisation, not just a completed session.

What Abstract-Technology brings to the partnership

Abstract-Technology is a Berlin-based EdTech company founded in 2015, with additional operations in Italy. We are one of the longest-standing Verified Open edX Service Partners globally - verified since the inception of the partner program more than eleven years ago. We deliver full-lifecycle EdTech services across Europe, North Africa, the US, Canada, and beyond, with over 150 successful deployments and more than one million learners reached across our platforms.

Our differentiators sit in areas that matter directly to accessibility work:

• EU regulatory fluency - GDPR, EU AI Act readiness, and sovereign hosting by design. Accessibility compliance is now part of that same compliance conversation, and it belongs alongside data protection and AI transparency in the modern EU tech stack.
• Native multilingual delivery in German, Italian, English, and French. Accessibility programmes rolled out at European scale need to land in the languages the actual users work in.
• Deep integration expertise across LMS ecosystems - Canvas, Open edX, and the tools institutions ask for by name: Turnitin, BigBlueButton, SMOWL, UbiCast, Wooclap, Annoto, Credly, and others.
• Multi-tenant platform capability, allowing us to serve diverse organisations from a single platform - a model that fits naturally with the way specialist vendors like AccessiWay can be brought together into a shared learning environment.

Our client references span six sectors: Higher Education, Corporate & Enterprise, Health, International Organisations & NGOs, Civic Education, and EU-Funded Consortiums. Named references include the German University of Digital Science (a full platform build including a custom AI Administrative Assistant, published as an IEEE paper at DemoCon 2026), the University of Bologna, and Reporterfabrik / Bürgerakademie in Germany - the country's leading media literacy and civic journalism training initiative, publicly funded and free at the point of use.

In each of these sectors, accessibility obligations under the EAA apply differently, and the appropriate response varies. This is where the partnership with AccessiWay becomes practically valuable.

What the partnership means in practice

Combining AccessiWay's vertical expertise with our platform, integration, and delivery capability gives organisations a comprehensive answer to the EAA - from strategy to code to culture. Concretely, the joint accessibility compliance services proposition covers:

• Targeted accessibility audit services. Rigorous identification of accessibility issues on your website, applications, and digital documents - grounded in WCAG audit methodology and manual conformance testing, not automated tools alone.
• Tailored accessibility remediation plans, with fixes handled in code. Audit findings translate directly into technical work that we execute. This is the point at which many accessibility programmes stall - reports get delivered, tickets get created, and nothing ships. Handling remediation inside a single accountable partnership closes that gap.
• Specialised training programmes through the AccessiWay Academy. Upskilling internal teams - designers, developers, content creators, customer service, managers - so that accessibility is built into the way work is produced rather than retrofitted afterwards. This is the sustainable half of the equation: audits fix what exists today, training prevents the same problems from re-entering the pipeline tomorrow.
• Ongoing and legal support. Including the drafting of the mandatory Accessibility Statements required by the regulation, and continuous monitoring to maintain compliance as products evolve. Accessibility is not a project with an end date - it is a state that has to be actively maintained.

Three strategic scenarios we're building together

The partnership is structured around three concrete scenarios, each with its own logic.

1. Portfolio integration. Abstract-Technology incorporates AccessiWay's vertical accessibility expertise directly into its portfolio, so that our existing clients across all six sectors have a first-party route to structured accessibility support without having to source and vet a separate vendor.
2. Joint participation in European calls and funding tenders. Both organisations are active in the EU-funded space - Erasmus+, Horizon, and public-sector consortium projects - where accessibility is increasingly a hard requirement in evaluation criteria rather than a nice-to-have. A joint bidding profile that combines LMS delivery, integration, multilingual reach, and specialist accessibility expertise strengthens both sides in competitive procurement.
3. Mutual referral where the fit is right. Where AccessiWay's clients need LMS delivery, integration work, or platform consulting, our capability is a valid option for them. The partnership creates a channel for those referrals to happen naturally, in both directions.

Who this matters to right now

If your organisation falls into any of the following categories, the EAA already applies to you, and the practical path to compliance is worth mapping in the near term:

• Higher education institutions - universities, universities of applied sciences, higher-education networks. Accessibility applies to learning platforms, student services, digital course materials, and public-facing websites.
• Corporate and enterprise - particularly organisations serving consumers in the EU through digital channels, and organisations running internal digital services for their workforce.
• Public sector and civic education - where accessibility obligations are the strictest and enforcement is most active.
• Healthcare - where digital touchpoints often serve users with a disproportionately high prevalence of the accessibility needs the regulation is designed to protect.
• NGOs and international organisations - where the mission alignment is often already present, but the technical implementation gap can be substantial.
• EU-funded consortium projects - where accessibility conformance is increasingly part of the deliverables clause itself.

Practical next steps

If the European Accessibility Act applies to your organisation and you want to understand where you actually stand - in concrete terms, not in abstract compliance-check terms - we're happy to arrange a short conversation. In a first session we can typically map:

• Which of your digital touchpoints are in scope of the regulation.
• What a structured accessibility audit would need to cover, given your specific stack.
• Where training would have the highest immediate impact inside your team structure.
• What a realistic accessibility remediation timeline looks like, based on the size and complexity of your properties.