Viewpoint - Accessibility: Transforming reporting for all stakeholders (including AI)

1. Why does accessibility matter?

In simple terms, it means that anyone can access the content they need, using whatever device, format and browser that works best for them. Compliance with accessibility standards ensures that websites and PDFs can be used by everyone.

Accessibility improves engagement for everyone

At the heart of this is inclusion for people with disabilities or impairments. This includes limited vision, hearing loss, cognitive or neurological differences, speech or motor difficulties, and people with temporary limitations.

This is vital for inclusion and compliance, but accessibility also improves usability for all stakeholders.

Accessibility helps all users to find, navigate, understand and engage with content. For example, accessibility standards require that content reflows so it is readable on a mobile phone. This matters because 98% of the world accesses content via a mobile.

Accessible reporting improves AI results

Digital accessibility is also a crucial part of Google SEO and AI GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) meaning content can be more easily found. Well-structured, accessible code improves AI’s ability to read and analyse reporting accurately and reliably.

Recent studies have shown that digital online reporting is three times more visible to LLMs, and the introduction of XBRL tagging makes it even more accurate for data analysis.

2. The accessibility legislation landscape

The European Accessibility Act (EAA)

The EAA came into force in June 2025 and applies to all companies with EU stakeholders. It requires that products and services provided to consumers must be accessible, and includes all online information intended for the public (like annual reports). 

The UK Equality Act 2010 (EQA)

The UK Equality Act requires companies to make "reasonable adjustments" to make online and PDF information accessible (including annual reports published on the website). Most large UK companies have made public commitments to make all content accessible wherever possible, but most annual reports don’t yet achieve this. 

The Americans with Disabilities Act (US ADA)

The Americans with Disabilities Act prohibits discrimination based on disability, and includes accessibility of websites and digital documents (like annual reports).

WCAG: The global standard

Most companies with stakeholders and customers across markets use the WCAG accessibility standards as the benchmark for their own digital publishing and policies.

WCAG is built around four principles:

• Perceivable – Information can be viewed by different types of users.

• Operable – Interfaces work for all users, including keyboard users.

• Understandable – Content and navigation are clear and predictable.

• Robust – Content works reliably across browsers and assistive technologies.

As reporting shifts to meet digital and AI needs, accessibility standards are now helping to define how reporting is created and published.

3. How do reporting regulations affect accessibility?

Publicly available digital reporting is now a legal requirement. 

At the risk of getting a bit technical, here are a few of the UK FCA’s Disclosure and Transparency Rules that have been mandated as part of ESEF to improve digital transparency and accessibility:

• DTR 4.1.15 requires that the annual report must be in the digital web format, XHTML. (PDF or summary online reports do not meet this requirement).

• DTRs 4.1.3/4.1.4 require that the annual report is available on the company website, and remains public for at least 10 years.

• DTR 6.3.4 requires that the annual report must be “capable of being disseminated to as wide a public as possible.” ie online and sharable.

• DTR 6.3.5 requires companies to provide stakeholders with the website link to the digital annual report online.

What does this really mean?

Alongside accessibility legislation, these rules combine to require full online annual reports that are accessible to as many stakeholders as possible.

Will the PDF still be needed?

Yes, the PDF format complements the digital version and user data shows PDF remains popular.

How does new software make this easier?

The latest digital design software makes multi-format reporting simple, so we recommend making both the PDF and digital versions “as accessible as possible” – this is also in line regulators’ guidance.

4. Why has reporting previously failed to meet accessibility standards?

Historically, the timing pressures and limitations of print and PDF software have made it almost impossible to deliver accessible annual reports. For many years, the teams responsible for creating reports had to shrug, and stakeholders had to accept these limitations.

But in 2021 the European Single Electronic Format (ESEF) arrived with the explicit aim of delivering “more accessible, transparent and comparable digital reporting.”

For the first few years, most solutions offered no improvement. They relied on a "bolt-on" process converting a PDF to HTML. This is a pragmatic print-first approach, but this process results in reports that are virtually unusable, and even less accessible than a standard PDF.

According to the Financial Reporting Council (FRC):

“PDF to HTML conversion tools translate PDFs to HTML almost pixel by pixel, resulting in messy and inefficient HTML code.”

As mentioned above, PDF is a brilliant and popular format and will remain important. But it is not a suitable source for creating usable or

accessible digital reporting.

The FRC advises that, to solve this, companies and their design teams will need to shift to ‘natively HTML’ processes , creating all formats from digital software, not print.

5. Accessibility underpins successful digitisation

By following WCAG accessibility standards, companies can solve many related challenges across reporting:

• Reports are more AI-readable

• ESEF format regulations are better met digitally

• Long, dense reports are made easier to access

• The data is more accurate and trusted for AI analysis

• Process improvement and efficiency

• More timely reporting

These are all enhanced by accessible, digital-first reporting.

This is why regulators like the FRC have recommended digital-first reporting processes.

6. How to deliver accessible reporting

The simplest approach for companies is to ask their specialist design team to prepare their PDF and digital reporting to meet accessibility standards.

By using digital-first software, designers can deliver reporting that's fully accessible and searchable, responsive, and readable on all devices.

Accessibility includes:

• Structured content tagging and heading hierarchies
• Text reflow - so reports can be read on any device (mobile friendly)
• Alt text for charts, graphics and images, where relevant
• Subtitles on videos
• Reading order to match visual reading order
• Accessible colour contrast, where possible
• Re-sizeable text controlled by users
• Keyboard navigation controls
  

7. A simple solution

As the FRC advises, major advances in digital-first reporting software mean that compliant, accessible, AI-friendly reporting is now easy to deliver.

This is what the Reportl platform has been built for.

Reportl efficiently:

• creates all reporting formats from a single digital source (HTML)

• delivers fully accessible PDFs, online reports and iXBRL

• publishes file structured, tagged, compliant reports

• improves search visibility, accessibility, and AI-readability

Because every output originates from clean, well-structured HTML, accessibility and AI-optimisation are built-in, not bolted on.

Reportl has been purpose built to bring all the advantages of digitisation to corporate reporting.

Leading reporters are already benefiting from this award-winning shift to digital software. For example, in 2025 Airtel Africa delivered the first AI-accessible, multi-format FTSE 100 annual and sustainability reporting suite.