News website accessibility

Digital accessibility means designing sites and services that everyone can use, including people with disabilities: visual impairment, deafness, cognitive difficulties, reading disorders such as dyslexia, motor disabilities. For a news site, it spans keyboard navigation, text alternatives for images, sufficient contrast, and captions for audio and video content.

The regulatory framework

The international reference is WCAG, the accessibility guidelines that national frameworks build upon; in France, for example, the RGAA turns them into verifiable criteria. Historically these obligations targeted the public sector. The scope changed with European directive 2019/882, known as the European Accessibility Act, whose requirements have applied since June 2025 to a wide range of private-sector digital services. Online news publishers are directly concerned: accessibility has shifted from voluntary good practice to a formal requirement, with declaration obligations attached.

What audio contributes, and what it does not replace

The audio version of an article serves real and broad needs: blind and low-vision readers who prefer a quality voice to the robotic output of a screen reader, dyslexic readers, audiences less comfortable with written text, tired or on-the-move readers. Combined with read-along highlighting, it also helps those who need to see and hear each word at the same time.

Honesty about the limits matters: audio does not replace an accessible website. A player that cannot be operated by keyboard or that screen readers cannot see adds a barrier instead of removing one. Audio is a powerful complement to an accessibility programme, not a substitute for bringing the site itself into compliance. For the publisher's perspective, see the WeDispatch accessibility page, which details how the player is built to meet these requirements rather than work around them.