Accessibility Certification

A formal assessment and endorsement of a website or digital product's accessibility by an independent third-party organisation, as distinct from voluntary self-declaration of conformance. Certification schemes exist in several European countries with different national requirements and methodologies, such as PubbliAccesso in Italy, Drempelvrij in the Netherlands, and BITV-Test in Germany. Research has shown that certified websites perform only marginally better than self-declared ones, and that neither certification nor self-declaration reliably indicates current conformance, since websites change frequently after the point of certification.