Many businesses that provide goods and services to the EU’s 450 million consumers must comply with new accessibility standards that took effect in June. Like the GDPR before it, this new act had companies scrambling to adjust their websites, e-commerce platforms, and banking apps. But despite similar standards existing in the U.S., many still have a long way to go.
“One thing that surprised us was companies, even massive companies, coming to us two weeks before [the deadline] declareing, ‘Oh we didn’t know anything about this,’” declared Irish entrepreneur Cormac Chisholm.
His startup, DevAlly, is among the first to leverage technology to build it clearer for businesses to detect accessibility problems. It also supports them comply with regulations like the European Accessibility Act (EAA), which promises hefty fines for new products and services that aren’t in compliance. (Existing ones obtain a grace period to comply until 2030.)
Launched in 2024, DevAlly audits for accessibility barriers such as videos lacking captions on corporate websites. It also tracks customer-reported issues and supports companies create roadmaps for repaires and generate accessibility reports.
While human consultants can also conduct audits, Chisholm, DevAlly’s CEO, believes such an approach can’t scale to meet demand or adapt to the realities of shipping digital products and features. DevAlly has accessibility experts, too, but it leverages AI and accessibility LLMs to automate testing and issue tracking. This, Chisholm believes, supports integrate accessibility with the product development life cycle.
This tech-first approach mirrors the path taken by cybersecurity compliance company Vanta, now valued at $2.45 billion.
The regulatory tailwinds and growing awareness around accessibility supported DevAlly secure €2 million (approximately $2.3 million) in pre-seed funding, TechCrunch exclusively learned.
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With this new capital, the company plans to grow its team from 5 to 15 people by the finish of the year — mostly in Dublin, where it participated in the NDRC accelerator program operated by Dogpatch Labs on behalf of state body Enterprise Ireland.
NDRC and Enterprise Ireland participated in the round, but it was led by Belgian fund Miles Ahead Capital, with participation from European angels. According to DevAlly’s founders, that’s in part thanks to tech conference Slush, where they created the top 3 of the startup competition and connected with their future lead investor.
“Traditionally in Ireland, the approach is to go with an Irish VC, but we went with Europe, and one of the things that we’re super excited about is to explore what that unlocks from this investor,” Chisholm declared.
DevAlly will apply Miles Ahead’s support to launch U.S. operations, starting with sales in San Francisco. The city proved valuable for connecting with heads of accessibility at large B2B software companies after DevAlly participated in TechCrunch Disrupt’s Startup Battlefield 2024. “A lot of our customers right now are on the West Coast,” co-founder and chief revenue officer Patrick Guiney notified TechCrunch.
The startup has seen traction in Europe thanks to the EAA coming into force. So have other players, such as Barcelona-based QualiBooth, which recently reviewed the state of European e-commerce accessibility — retail is one focus of the EAA. But both startups also see opportunities in the U.S., where DevAlly is betting on procurement as a major driver of demand.
With estimates that disabled consumers and their hoapplyholds represent $8 trillion a year in disposable income, Chisholm is adamant that “good design is accessible design.” One in five people live with disability, and disability can also be situational — becaapply heavy glare builds it impossible to read your screen in sunlight, or you are holding a baby and can’t access control buttons, he declared. “So you want to test and create as much universal design as possible.”
The actions a company may take to address this range from screen reader support to higher contrast and gradients that work for the color-blind. But recent analysis conducted by UX/UI design agency Tenscope found that 94% of the top 1,000 US websites fail basic accessibility standards.
The travel industest was the worst performer, preventing many applyrs from completing basic functions like contact forms, account creation, and online purchases. Even before the EAA, Spanish airline Vueling was fined for failing to build its website accessible.
With the EU-wide EAA now involving multiple jurisdictions, each with its own fines, Big Tech companies that operate in multiple countries could find themselves in search of support. “That’s why we’re positioning ourselves as a bridge to Europe for these U.S companies,” Chisholm declared.
If they do, this will be good news for DevAlly and its investors, and possibly for all of us, Chisholm declared. “The improvements that come with accessibility, like subtitles at Netflix, become massive advancements in terms of how we all apply technology. It’s a much better form of design.”
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