{"id":210636,"date":"2025-10-13T16:49:14","date_gmt":"2025-10-13T16:49:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/210636\/"},"modified":"2025-10-13T16:49:14","modified_gmt":"2025-10-13T16:49:14","slug":"startup-battlefield-alum-devally-raises-e2m-to-help-companies-with-europes-feisty-new-accessibility-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/210636\/","title":{"rendered":"Startup Battlefield alum DevAlly raises \u20ac2M to help companies with Europe’s feisty new accessibility law"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many businesses that provide goods and services to the EU\u2019s 450 million consumers must comply with new accessibility standards<\/a> that took effect in June. Like the GDPR before it, this new act had companies scrambling to adjust their websites, e-commerce platforms, and banking apps. But despite similar standards existing in the U.S., many still have a long way to go.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne thing that surprised us was companies, even massive companies, coming to us two weeks before [the deadline] saying, \u2018Oh we didn\u2019t know anything about this,\u2019\u201d said Irish entrepreneur Cormac Chisholm.<\/p>\n

His startup, DevAlly<\/a>, is among the first to leverage technology to make it easier for businesses to detect accessibility problems. It also helps them comply with regulations like the European Accessibility Act (EAA), which promises hefty fines for new products and services that aren\u2019t in compliance. (Existing ones get a grace period to comply until 2030.)<\/p>\n

Launched in 2024, DevAlly audits for accessibility barriers such as videos lacking captions on corporate websites. It also tracks customer-reported issues and helps companies create roadmaps for fixes and generate accessibility reports.<\/p>\n

While human consultants can also conduct audits, Chisholm, DevAlly\u2019s CEO, believes such an approach can\u2019t scale to meet demand or adapt to the realities of shipping digital products and features. DevAlly has accessibility experts, too, but it leverages AI and accessibility LLMs to automate testing and issue tracking. This, Chisholm believes, helps integrate accessibility with the product development life cycle.<\/p>\n

This tech-first approach mirrors the path taken by cybersecurity compliance company Vanta<\/a>, now valued at $4.15 billion<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The regulatory tailwinds and growing awareness around accessibility helped DevAlly secure \u20ac2 million (approximately $2.3 million) in pre-seed funding, TechCrunch exclusively learned.<\/p>\n

Techcrunch event<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t|
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 27-29, 2025\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

With this new capital, the company plans to grow its team from 5 to 15 people by the end of the year \u2014 mostly in Dublin, where it participated in the NDRC accelerator program<\/a> operated by Dogpatch Labs on behalf of state body Enterprise Ireland.<\/p>\n

NDRC and Enterprise Ireland participated in the round, but it was led by Belgian fund Miles Ahead Capital<\/a>, with participation from European angels. According to DevAlly\u2019s founders, that\u2019s in part thanks to tech conference Slush, where they made the top 3<\/a> of the startup competition and connected with their future lead investor.<\/p>\n

\u201cTraditionally in Ireland, the approach is to go with an Irish VC, but we went with Europe, and one of the things that we\u2019re super excited about is to explore what that unlocks from this investor,\u201d Chisholm said.<\/p>\n

DevAlly will use Miles Ahead\u2019s support to launch U.S. operations, starting with sales in San Francisco. The city proved valuable for connecting with heads of accessibility at large B2B software companies after DevAlly participated in TechCrunch Disrupt\u2019s Startup Battlefield 2024<\/a>. \u201cA lot of our customers right now are on the West Coast,\u201d co-founder and chief revenue officer Patrick Guiney told TechCrunch.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The startup has seen traction in Europe thanks to the EAA coming into force. So have other players, such as Barcelona-based QualiBooth<\/a>, which recently reviewed the state of European e-commerce accessibility<\/a> \u2014 retail is one focus of the EAA. But both startups also see opportunities in the U.S., where DevAlly is betting on procurement as a major driver of demand.<\/p>\n

With estimates that disabled consumers and their households represent $8 trillion a year<\/a> in disposable income, Chisholm is adamant that \u201cgood design is accessible design.\u201d One in five people live with disability, and disability can also be situational \u2014 because heavy glare makes it impossible to read your screen in sunlight, or you are holding a baby and can\u2019t access control buttons, he said. \u201cSo you want to try and create as much universal design as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

The actions a company may take to address this range from screen reader support to higher contrast and gradients that work for the color-blind. But recent analysis conducted by UX\/UI design agency Tenscope found that 94% of the top 1,000 US websites<\/a> fail basic accessibility standards.<\/p>\n

The travel industry was the worst performer, preventing many users from completing basic functions like contact forms, account creation, and online purchases. Even before the EAA, Spanish airline Vueling was fined<\/a> for failing to make its website accessible.<\/p>\n

With the EU-wide EAA now involving multiple jurisdictions, each with its own fines, Big Tech companies that operate in multiple countries could find themselves in search of help. \u201cThat\u2019s why we\u2019re positioning ourselves as a bridge to Europe for these U.S companies,\u201d Chisholm said.<\/p>\n

If they do, this will be good news for DevAlly and its investors, and possibly for all of us, Chisholm said. \u201cThe improvements that come with accessibility, like subtitles at Netflix, become massive advancements in terms of how we all use technology. It\u2019s a much better form of design.\u201d<\/p>\n

This story was updated to correct Vanta\u2019s valuation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Many businesses that provide goods and services to the EU\u2019s 450 million consumers must comply with new accessibility…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":210637,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[60930,129661,64,63,99,129662,198,5607],"class_list":{"0":"post-210636","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entrepreneurship","8":"tag-accessibility","9":"tag-americans-with-disabilities-act","10":"tag-au","11":"tag-australia","12":"tag-business","13":"tag-devally","14":"tag-entrepreneurship","15":"tag-exclusive"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210636"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210636\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/210637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}