Luxembourg is stepping up efforts to ensure digital accessibility

The Luxembourg government is taking active steps to improve digital accessibility for all citizens, especially for people with disabilities. As part of the law of 28 May 2019, the State Information Service (SIP) publishes a report every three years to monitor the accessibility of public websites and applications. The SIP also conducts regular audits to identify problems and recommend improvements, and training courses on the subject are organised for public sector employees.

One of the key challenges remains the accessibility of PDF documents. The SIP has developed clear guidelines (RAPDF 1) for creating accessible PDFs, but these documents are still widely used in the public sector and do not always meet the required standards. Between 2022 and 2024, 18 complaints were received, 8 of which related to PDF documents, and almost all were successfully resolved. In the remaining cases, the causes of the problems were technical and are planned to be addressed in the next technology update.

Luxembourg is also working on improving cognitive accessibility in accordance with the European standard EN 301 549. It is expected that the next version of the standard will include new criteria to support cognitive accessibility. Several projects are already active in this direction:

• Accessilingua - translating texts in Luxembourgish into an easier language for better understanding.
• ScreenreaderLB - Luxembourgish speech synthesis development, which will be useful for people with dyslexia or other reading problems.

In addition, the Centre de la communication accessible à tous (CCAT) organises training and information campaigns to raise awareness of the needs of people with disabilities for alternative means of communication.

Digital accessibility is gradually being integrated into educational programmes. In the Brevet de technicien supérieur (BTS), the issue is addressed in courses related to website and application development. At the University of Luxembourg, the Bachelor of Computer Science programme addresses the issue of accessibility in the module "Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)", which covers the social aspects of human-computer interaction, including privacy, security and accessibility.