Despite the drawbacks and the challenges highlighted by several scholars, Information and Communication Technology (ICT), in particular the World Wide Web, has the potential to foster social inclusion of people with disabilities. The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD), which entered into force in 2008, has illuminated the role technology can play as a tool to promote the human rights of people with disabilities, and their participation and inclusion in society. The UNCRPD has also conceptualized ICT accessibility as a precondition for the enjoyment of rights, prompting a series of reforms in domestic legal frameworks globally and in the European Union (EU). Against this background, this article aims to address the role played by the EU in fostering “digital inclusion”, and critically evaluates relevant EU policies and legal rules, locating them within the broader realm of the implementation of the UNCRPD. It pays particular attention to Directive 2016/2102 on the accessibility of the websites and mobile applications of public sector bodies, as well as on the proposal for a European Accessibility Act (EAA). It attempts to show that, while the EU has thus far played an extremely important role in fostering web accessibility, many remaining obstacles must be eradicated to fully ensure access to the web to people with disabilities. This article adopts a doctrinal legal research methodology and is primarily concerned with the analysis of relevant legal rules and related scholarship. In addition, it is informed by a socially-oriented understanding of disability and builds upon the multifaceted and multidisciplinary literature on disability and technology.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aspire to “leave no-one behind”. Universal access to assistive products is a critical link between the realization of the SDGs and those most likely to be left behind. However, assistive technology provision in many countries, particularly low- and middle-income countries, has traditionally been conducted through small-scale local providers, manufacturing products of varying degrees of quality at a limited price range. An effective way to scale these production and provision enterprises to the required level is needed to close the gap between available and required assistive technology. We argue that better access to assistive technology will only be realized through the adoption of a far stronger systems thinking and market shaping approach. We undertook a rapid literature review to explore the relationship between market shaping and assistive technology. Based on our review, we present an emergent framework for conceptualizing intersections between systems thinking and market shaping for assistive technology—the SMART (Systems-Market for Assistive and Related Technologies) Thinking Matrix.

The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) explicitly embeds the concept of reasonable accommodation within the principle of non-discrimination. Article 2 of the CRPD unambiguously recognizes that reasonable accommodation is vital in enabling persons with disabilities to enjoy and exercise their rights on an equal basis with others. This article argues that in the ten years since its entry into force, the CRPD has stimulated a process of cross-fertilization. In particular, it contends that the CRPD has played a crucial role in the advancement of disability equality, and in the recognition of reasonable accommodation as a gateway to the equal enjoyment of all human rights within the European human rights system. By adopting a legal perspective and a traditional doctrinal approach, this article focuses on relevant European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) case law. It shows the gradual adoption by the ECtHR of the concept of reasonable accommodation as an essential element to remove specific barriers or disadvantages to which a particular disabled individual would otherwise be subject. The primary emphasis of this short article is on the ECtHR case law and on the extent to which it has translated the CRPD and the work of the CRPD Committee into the European human rights system.