Volume Four - July 2025
Subject – Assessing your Tech Accessibility and the European Accessibility Act
Hello and welcome to the fourth volume of our Source Code Conversations series. If you’re a first time reader, we hold a monthly Conversation with specialists across our team on hot technology topics and what they mean for you. This month is no different as we spent time with both our Cloud Services Director, Paul McAdam and Accessibility Specialist, Les Hall to talk about our Accessibility Assessment service.
Our first interview in April (where has the time gone?) covered the new European Accessibility Act with Paul (you can read it here) and this discussion is a follow-up on how our assessment can help you improve the experience for your clients and team members, as well as setting you on the path to compliance.
Accessibility benefits everyone, so please read on and get in touch to discuss this further.
Matt Webb: Paul, Les – thanks a lot for your time today. Paul – our audience probably know you already from our previous discussion, thanks for coming back. Les – please can you give us an introduction to your background and role at Source Code Control?
Les Hall: Hello. I’ve been with Source Code Control for nearly seven years. Initially I worked on Cloud Economics Solution Assessments, seeing that practice grow to the global operation we now have. Over the last 18 months I’ve worked on developing the Accessibility Assessment alongside Paul and the team, as it’s an area I am passionate about. As part of this I’ve recently become a Certified Professional in Accessibility Core Competencies through the International Association of Accessibility Professionals (IAAP) IAAP – Home
Matt: Thank you! Congratulations on obtaining your certification, we know how much time and effort went into that. Paul – you spent time in our previous discussion talking about the new European Accessibility Act (EAA), please can you give us a quick reminder on what this is and when it comes into effect? Also, why was it important for you that Source Code Control has added an Accessibility Assessment to our portfolio please?
Paul: Thank you and thanks for having me again. So, the European Accessibility Act was passed in 2019 and became mandatory in June 2025 – meaning that all member states must have a law in place. In theory, this is a broad-reaching act which covers all products and services including consumer electronics. We talked to one customer who has vending machines with screens and obviously, has to consider those!
The penalties would apply only to public sector organisations, but “restrictions” are threatened for non-compliant commercial organisations. Ultimately, that would be country-by-country but could include things like disqualification from public-sector procurement.
As far as “why?”… well, we’ve been working with Microsoft customers for 2-3 years now on Accessibility, but the European Accessibility Act is obviously relevant to all software and hardware vendors.
Matt: Thanks Paul, that brings us up to speed nicely! It sounds like the perfect time for this assessment to be coming to market, and that it could help a lot of organisations. Let’s talk about the assessment itself in more detail then. Les – please can you paint a picture of the key benefits that someone can expect if they go through an Accessibility Assessment?
Les: Sure. Within the assessment we look to build a picture of the current position regarding accessibility within the organisation, highlighting opportunities to improve understanding and help build towards a fully accessible strategy. One of the key ideas is “accessibility benefits everyone” so the outputs and direction taken from the assessment would be improving the experience for existing and prospective employees, stakeholders and customers.
Matt: Ok great. So people now know the reason this is important, they can see the benefits they will receive…please can you map out the stages of the assessment and perhaps how quickly an organisation could be implementing some of the recommended changes?
Les: The Website Review can help identify immediate actions to ensure key landing pages are accessible and compliant with WCAG 2.1 AA standards. In this phase of the assessment, we can highlight areas to be addressed immediately. For example, in one case, we highlighted one image that was missing Alt-text and the client was able to update this within a couple of days of the results being presented
The questionnaire can indicate the current accessibility maturity level accessibility within the organisation, showing opportunities where this can be advanced through strategies and technology adoption.
Finally, we provide an Education Deck, which gives a wider context to where Accessibility sits in relation to assorted National, Continental and International legislation, whilst also showing the standards which support these (eg. WCAG).
Matt: Thanks Les, very comprehensive! As we start to wrap up our discussion, Paul – where can people go to read more and request their Accessibility Assessment please?
Paul: Thanks very much! Great info from Les!
To get an Accessibility Assessment you can always contact myself or Les and we will get things moving. We are going live in Azure Marketplace imminently and we will post the link once that is available. More information is available on our website via
Improving Accessibility and Understanding Obligations – Source Code Control
Beyond Accessibility, we have a portfolio of Cloud Spend Management, Security and IT assessments. Follow our LinkedIn page to keep up to date: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/cloudservicessourcecodecontrol
Matt: It’s been great talking to you both, thank you for your time and insights. We will post some details below for anyone who wants to connect with you to discuss this further.
That concludes our July edition of Source Code Conversations, thank you for reading and as always we hope you found the content to be useful. You can connect with Paul and Les on LinkedIn via (25) Paul McAdam | LinkedIn and (25) Leslie H. | LinkedIn, and you can contact our team via hello@sourcecodecontrol.com. We always appreciate the opportunity to discuss our services further, as well as receiving ideas for future interviews.
You can read the previous instalments of our series, as well as other content produced by our team, at Blog – Source Code Control
Les Hall
Interviewee
Paul McAdam
Interviewee
Matt Webb
Interviewer
Zoe Hawkins
Editor