DevAlly has raised €2 million to scale software that helps businesses adhere to the European Accessibility Act, a regulation omnibus that is changing how digital products are constructed and sold throughout the bloc. Now that the law is beginning to bite there’s skyrocketing demand for automated testing and clear remediation paths, and auditable reports — which is where Dublin-based startup DevAlly comes in, positioning itself as the compliance co-pilot for product and engineering teams.
Europe’s New Accessibility Rules, and Why They Matter
The European Accessibility Act (EAA) had already delivered a single, market-wide standard on accessibility for consumer-facing services and devices – from e-commerce websites to banking apps, ticketing systems to e-readers. It applies to businesses that serve the EU’s approximately 450 million consumers, and it is consistent with harmonized standards such as EN 301 549 that are closely aligned with WCAG guidelines from the World Wide Web Consortium.
As with the privacy revamp it follows, the EAA brings in genuine enforcement: national authorities may investigate, impose fines and possibly ban non-compliant products. Importantly, the law is not a box-checker; it requires that users be able to actually accomplish tasks — search for information, buy stuff, pay bills, contact support — without impediments. For teams accustomed to shipping fast, this means accessibility needs to be baked into the software development life cycle rather than being tacked on at the end.
Some organizations were taken by surprise. Broadbent said that executives had assumed existing accessibility programmes, or standards in the US, could simply be carried over to Europe and they would be fine, only to discover that a European accessibility framework required consistently documented accessibility issues with fixes being auditable and recurring monitoring required. It is the compliance gap stemming from that reality that DevAlly is trying to fill.
How DevAlly’s Platform Approaches Compliance
DevAlly’s offering combines automated scanning, AI-driven triage and human expertise.
It spots problems like missing captions, low color contrast, unlabeled form controls, inaccessible focus states, and broken keyboard navigation in websites and apps. Beyond discovery, the software turns discoveries into developer-ready tickets, ranks issues by user impact, and tracks remediation to completion.
The system produces accessibility statements and packs of evidence that are just what auditors and regulators want, so there isn’t a scramble when a customer or partner or authority wants to see proof. Integrate with CI/CD pipelines to let teams catch regressions in advance of release. The startup’s approach to domain-tuned language models is all about context — around surfacing the right WCAG references and code-level suggestions so that engineers can fix once and not repeat the mistakes of the past.
It’s a “secure-by-default” approach to accessibility: measure continuously, fix quickly and keep an audit trail. That playbook follows a similar pattern to that used by modern security and compliance platforms which turned specialist consulting into scalable, product-led software.
Funding and DevAlly’s Europe-first growth strategy
Belgian investor Miles Ahead Capital led the round with participation from Enterprise Ireland, the NDRC-backed programme run by Dogpatch Labs and several European angels. DevAlly expects to grow its team from a couple of paws full of specialists today to around 15 people, focusing product and go-to-market roles in Dublin.
There had been a spike in interest as the EAA enters enforcement and DevAlly was registering some early traction with retailers, banks and travel platforms — areas where completing tasks is mission-critical and regulatory scrutiny already pressing. The startup additionally views opportunity in the US via procurement: both public and large private buyers are increasingly demanding that selling organizations demonstrate conformance to WCAG as well as producing robust documentation of accessibility.
The business argument for accessibility and inclusive design
There is more to accessibility than risk reduction. According to Return on Disability, people with disabilities and their families command about $8 trillion worth of spendable income in the United States each year. One in five people have a disability, and many more face situational barriers — glare on a screen in bright sunshine, a T-shirt over a trackpad or holding a sleeping baby while trying to do online work with just one free arm — that accessible design makes possible for all of us.
Yet gaps persist. A study by design agency Tenscope declared most of the top US sites still fall short of basic standards, and WebAIM’s ongoing virtual audits of major homepages continue to turn up things like empty links and missing alt text. In travel — a frequent source of frustration — the user is often prevented from filling out forms, creating accounts or making payments for bookings. Already, European regulators have fined an airline for an inaccessible site, suggesting bad experiences may have real costs.
The benefits are obvious: higher conversion, lower support costs, improved SEO and immunity from legal exposure. Organizations who transport accessibility with their components — focus indicators that tell a story, semantic HTML, captions and transcripts, high-contrast palettes, screen-reader-friendly labels — tend to witness measurable lifts in task completion and customer satisfaction.
Global stakes for multinationals under the EAA
The country-by-country enforcement within the EAA would add complexity for Big Tech and global brands working across several EU markets. Each member state can establish its own oversight mechanisms and sanctions, bumping up the cost of piecemeal fixes. Suppliers that can demonstrate regular compliance, supported by repeatable testing and documentation will have an edge in large enterprise sales and public-sector tenders.
DevAlly wants to be that bridge for companies who are standardising on European requirements. The benefits, if successful, will extend well beyond compliance. As the streaming era illustrated with captions that are now accessed by millions even when optional, accessibility enhancements have a way of trickling up to become mainstream features — making technology more efficient, more lucid and just plain better for everyone.
The assistive tech market is heating up, with European upstarts — from the Barcelona-based specialists to Nordic consultancies — fighting for business against more established U.S. tools. With new capital and a law-driven tailwind behind them, DevAlly is betting big that a product-first, developer-centric approach will lead the way forward as accessibility is transformed from a checkbox to a core product metric.
