Compliance Β· Accessibility Β· Data Visualisation
Legislation & Dataviz
Accessibility and digital legislation is now enforced globally, with data visualisation not only affected but squarely in the crosshairs of regulators. Understand what the rules require, where automated tools fail, and how Visible Data helps you comply and build for human with confidence.
The landscape
Accessibility law has teeth globally
Accessibility is no longer a "nice to have". Both the EU and US have robust, active legislation that affects all digital services and products.
πͺπΊ European Union
European Accessibility Act (EAA) 2025
- Applies to products and services placed on the EU market β including websites, apps, and digital data products
- Compliance required by new services from 2025 with a grace period for existing services expiring in 2030
- Enforcement via national market surveillance authorities β fines, injunctions, and product withdrawal
πΊπΈ United States
ADA Title II & DOJ Final Rule 2024
- Applies to all services provided by state and local government entitites.
- Compliance required for entities with populations over 50,000 from 2027, extending to all entites from 2028.
- Federally procured software already requires compliance.
- Private-sector case law under Title III continues to expand scope
Prior to these regulations coming into force, regulators were already issuing significant fines and blocking businesses from government contracts. Both the EAA and ADA Title II legislation makes non-compliance more likely, easier to define and more aggressively punished across all digital services sold within the EU and US.
- In 2024 the lowcost Spanish airline Vueling was fined β¬90,000 and prohibited from receiving public funds for six months due to inaccessible booking services.
- MORE EXAMPLES
Dataviz need to be accessible
There's signficant evidence that customers prefer and enjoy using products and services with dataviz. However, they're often forgotten about during accessibility reviews which are more usually applied to webpages. Dataviz need to be made accessible too, which means you need to think about all of the roles they play.
Dataviz serve many uses.
- Charts engage and attract customers
- Dataviz provide users understanding of their data
- Interactive elements drive products and services
Dataviz appear everywhere.
- BI tools like PowerBI, Looker and Tableau
- Developer tools like JavaScript frameworks
- Data science tools like R and Python
The nature of dataviz means that they are subject to additional accessibility requirements which cannot be tested automatically.
The problem
Automatic tests and remediation do not work for dataviz.
Regulators in both the EU and US agree that it is simply not possible to use "automatic accessibility audits" or similar tools to comply with the legilsation. In 2025 the FTC fined AccessiBE $1million for false advertising over claims that their tools were sufficient to meet legislation.
"Automated testing tools identify only a subset of accessibility barriers. They cannot evaluate whether a chart conveys equivalent information to a non-visual user."
"Overlay products that claim to automatically fix accessibility issues do not meet the requirements of Title II. Entities cannot rely solely on automated tools to achieve compliance β human testing with users of assistive technologies remains essential."
The only way to comply with legislation is to shift left. Responsibility has to be moved away from remediation to all knowledge workers and the enterprise centering humans in their data communication. Our Pier Platform is built specifically to empower this move to accessible and digitally inclusive data visualisation.
The standard
What legislation actually requires your dataviz
The four WCAG principles β Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, Robust β apply to every data visualisation asset you publish. Below is a plain-language mapping of the criteria that most commonly fail in dataviz work.
| Principle | Key criteria | Dataviz implication |
|---|---|---|
| Perceivable | 1.1.1 Non-text content; 1.4.3 Contrast (min); 1.4.11 Non-text contrast | Every chart needs a text alternative; data marks and axes must meet 3:1 contrast against their background |
| Perceivable | 1.4.1 Use of colour | Colour alone cannot encode data β always pair with pattern, texture, or direct labels |
| Operable | 2.1.1 Keyboard; 2.4.3 Focus order; 2.5.3 Label in name | Interactive charts must be fully keyboard-navigable; tooltips triggered only on hover fail this criterion |
| Understandable | 3.3.2 Labels or instructions | Axes, legends, and data series must be clearly labelled in the visual and in accessible markup |
| Robust | 4.1.2 Name, role, value; 4.1.3 Status messages | SVG elements need explicit ARIA roles; dynamic data updates must be announced to assistive technologies |
Colour & Contrast
Automated tools check hex values β they cannot verify that a legend palette is distinguishable for deuteranopia, protanopia, and tritanopia simultaneously, or that contrast holds across projectors and print.
Keyboard & Screen Reader
SVG and canvas charts require hand-crafted ARIA roles, descriptions, and keyboard navigation paths. No scanner can generate meaningful alt text for a time-series chart or a choropleth map.
Interactive Complexity
Tooltips, drill-downs, filters, and animated transitions each introduce new barriers. Compliance requires testing every interaction state with real assistive technology, not a static snapshot.
Our approach
How Visible Data moves you from risk to compliance
We are experts in data visualisation, communication and digital inclusivity. We're building our Pier platform to provide everyone with the software, skills and support necessary to build dataviz for all points with humans at the heart.
Pier Platform
Pier is great.
Compass & Foundry
Built into the Pier platform, Compass & Foundry are our digital inclusivity .
Pier
Pier is our dataviz coach and recommendation engine that encorporates accessibility review through the iteration process.
Visible Data Compass
A compliant colour palette, typography scale, and chart component library built into your brand guidelines so new charts are accessible by default.