This country/region is part of the Global Law and Policy Page, which contains information about laws that protect disabled people’s rights to participate in the digital world.
[Note: This country is in the European Union (EU). Visit the European Union section of this Global Digital Accessibility Laws Page for more information about the European Accessibility Act and other digital accessibility Directives impacting EU countries.]
- The Dutch government’s digital accessibility portal with links, resources, and a tool to evaluate accessibility
- The 2023 status of accessibility in the Netherlands conforms to the Web Accessibility Directive and is transposed into national law with a Temporary Act for digital accessibility (Tijdelijk Besluit Digitale Toegankelijkheid)
- Dutch Public Sector Bodies need to publish an accessibility statement on their websites. It is not mandatory, but they are urged to also publish their statement into the national register website. Depending on their status of accessibility a site is given an A-E rating
- Fully compliant (statement + audit report with no issues found)
- Partially accessible (Statement + audit report but contains findings to resolve)
- Statement and first audit scheduled in the next 6 months
- Statement but no audit and nothing planned
- No statement
- The monitoring currently sits with the “DigiToegankelijk” team, which sits under the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations. In March 2023 this government division released an accessibility dashboard that is meant to give more insight in the information from the registry. Currently there are almost 4300 websites in the register and a reportedly 3000 of those a legally compliant, meaning they have a statement and an audit report or an audit planned. 371 of them have an A status and should fully meet WCAG 2.1 AA.
- Monitoring currently happens at the statement level, meaning that the information required for the statement is checked but not the accessibility of the website itself. Additionally, since only the statement is monitored, any changes to websites that may break accessibility may not be reflected in the ratings.