Telethon Foundation’s accessible breakthrough with Eye-Able for digital inclusion

Through the strategic use of artificial intelligence for technical audit, innovative automatic remediation tools and customizable widgets for users with visual, motor or cognitive disabilities, the collaboration demonstrates how technology can simplify internal business processes and, at the same time, restore full navigation autonomy to donors, volunteers and patients. From the words of Lorenzo Scumaci, to Adnkronos Tech&Games, it clearly emerges how the elimination of digital barriers, which today still concerns ninety-eight percent of Italian sites, should no longer be perceived as a mere cost of compliance, but rather as a strategic investment capable of expanding the audience, improving the user experience and giving a concrete and measurable form to the values ​​of corporate social responsibility.

The collaboration with the Telethon Foundation represents a very significant case study for the Third Sector. How does your all-in-one platform adapt to the specific needs of a charity, where digital inclusion connects so directly to the institutional mission of leaving no one behind?

“For many charities such as the Telethon Foundation, social mission and accessibility coincide with the latter becoming a direct extension of the organisation’s values, as well as a technical or regulatory requirement. For over 35 years, the Telethon Foundation has been committed to supporting the best scientific research on rare genetic diseases, driven by a simple principle: no one should be left behind. A principle that today also extends to digital. Because in a world where inclusion increasingly passes through a screen, having an inaccessible site would be a contradiction with one’s values, even before being a regulatory problem.

It must be said, however, that the needs of a non-profit organization in terms of accessibility are not that different from those of any other organization, and converge in the direction of maximum usability. To meet these needs, our platform offers a complete and integrated approach, providing direct analysis, reporting and remediation tools for continuous monitoring, as well as many other solutions that immediately improve the user experience, such as breaking down digital barriers for PDF documents. This is crucial to ensuring that every digital touchpoint with donors, volunteers or visitors is truly accessible to all.

Of course, those who operate in the Third Sector certainly pay particular attention to scalability and operational simplicity, since internal resources are often limited and must be optimized. By combining automation and technical support, our offer is therefore a particularly effective and sustainable solution.”

Lorenzo Scumaci, CEO Eye-Able Italia

The project with the Telethon Foundation started with a technical audit supported by artificial intelligence and then moved on to the remediation phase. What were the main critical issues encountered in this first phase and how do you intend to extend this collaboration in the long term to ensure continuous monitoring?

“The adoption of our platform represents a shared path, capable of accompanying the customer in their digital transformation processes. The real challenge lies not only in the digital barriers present on a site or an app, but in the ability of those who undertake this path to understand their value. Accessibility, today recognized as a new ethical and regulatory standard, certainly represents an approach

innovative, but above all a paradigm shift: a language still to be learned, internalized and translated into practice, also and above all by companies.

The technical audit phase highlights all the critical issues, from the most common to the highly impactful ones: contrast and readability problems, a non-optimal semantic structure, interactive elements that are not fully accessible and documents that do not comply with accessibility standards. Aspects that, although invisible for some users, represent insurmountable barriers for many other people.

Telethon Foundation is starting this process and thanks to the support of our platform, artificial intelligence and our technical consultants it will have full control over all phases of the work. The tool does not limit itself to reporting errors, but to explaining their origin and suggesting alternative technical solutions, facilitating the work of the development and consequent fixing teams. Once this phase was completed, the subsequent remediation process allowed the site and its contents to be corrected. Eye-Able is one of the very few companies in Europe that has a solution dedicated to automatic remediation, which allows you to intervene in a concrete and structured way on the critical issues detected, supporting the implementation of the corrections necessary to align the site with the accessibility standards required by the legislation. This solution allows you to intervene in a direct and structured way on the critical issues detected.

However, our support does not stop here: regulatory and technological developments require constant updating, which we guarantee through continuous monitoring, operational consultancy and technical and legal training.”

The European Accessibility Act (EAA) introduces stringent obligations that are added to the pre-existing Stanca Law in Italy. What is the average state of preparation of Italian companies with respect to this deadline and what are the main risks for companies that do not adapt in time?

“Over the past year we have seen significant growth in awareness on the topic, but there is still much work to be done. Those who have already started working on accessibility quickly understand the benefits, which go far beyond simple compliance and translate into concrete advantages in terms of performance, optimization and consistency with ESG strategies already in place. However, the main obstacle remains the initial phase: awareness of the urgency is still too low.

When we talk about digital accessibility, in fact, we are not referring exclusively to people with disabilities: the topic also concerns adults who are not very digitalised, the elderly and, more generally, anyone who finds themselves in conditions of limited use. It’s a question of universal inclusion that many companies continue to underestimate.

Failure to comply not only exposes you to the risk of administrative sanctions – which can reach up to 5% of turnover – but can constitute a form of indirect discrimination, if the absence of adequate accessibility measures

involves the exclusion, even unintentional, of users with disabilities. This situation may constitute a violation of Law 67/2006, with consequent possibility of legal action and requests for compensation. Furthermore, failure to comply may result in the loss of a significant share of users and potential customers, in a market environment where compliance will quickly become a minimum essential requirement for access.”

There are various monitoring solutions on the European market, but Eye-Able stands out as one of the very few companies equipped with technology dedicated to automatic remediation. What is the added value of this tool and how does it facilitate the fixing work of internal company development teams?

“The added value of our automatic remediation lies in the ability to drastically reduce operational times and complexity, intervening immediately on a significant portion of the most recurring problems.

In many organizations, development teams are already busy and the issue of accessibility risks taking a back seat. Our technology automates a significant part of the fixing, for example on contrasts, navigation and visual adaptations, allowing you to obtain tangible improvements right away. Furthermore, the platform does not intervene directly on the code, but overlaps with it, minimizing the complexities related to development and compatibility.

The work of the developers is therefore not replaced, but made more effective with a support tool, which gives more control over the status of the activity and simplifies all execution phases. In this way, teams and experts can focus on activities with the highest human and qualitative impact, such as reviewing the code structure and improving the overall user experience.”

Your ecosystem includes accessibility widgets to customize navigation in case of blindness, color blindness, epilepsy or cognitive difficulties, but also specific tools for PDF files. Why is the accessibility of static documents often overlooked and how do we solve this problem from a technical perspective?

“The accessibility of static documents, such as PDFs, is often overlooked because it is perceived as secondary to the website.

However, many organizations publish fundamental content in PDF format, such as brochures, reports, forms, legal documents, which, if not structured correctly, become effectively unusable for those who use assistive technologies. Issues such as the absence of semantic tags, incorrect reading order, or lack of navigability via screen reader or keyboard seriously compromise accessibility.

From a technical perspective, the solution requires both tools and processes. On the one hand, we provide technologies that can analyze and improve

automatically the accessibility of documents, identifying the main critical issues. On the other hand, we support companies in adopting good practices already in the creation phase, because accessibility must be integrated upstream into the content production flows, to guarantee quality and compliance over time.”

As a European scale-up specialized in digital accessibility, what are your next growth objectives on the Italian market and how is the managerial culture evolving with respect to the idea that accessibility is not just a compliance cost, but a strategic investment?

“In Italy we are growing rapidly, but the challenge remains enormous. Suffice it to say that approximately 98% of Italian sites are still inaccessible. For us, this represents both a great responsibility and an extraordinary opportunity, and it is inspiring to know how much work there is still to do.

From our interactions with managers and departments it emerges that accessibility has become a central theme for companies, also because in Italy making a site accessible means gaining at least 20% more users. However, the lack of a dedicated interlocutor often does not allow this awareness to be transformed into concrete actions and the topic, involving marketing, e-commerce, legal, HR and IT transversally, does not find full ownership. Helping companies structure this internal governance is an integral part of our work.

The good news is that, when companies understand that accessibility is not a compliance cost but a strategic investment, with a positive impact on conversions, reputation and inclusion, the change in perspective is immediate and profound.”