Level Access Acquires UserWay: Celebrating a Milestone

The day we’ve been waiting for has finally arrived! We have completed our acquisition of UserWay, a pioneer in accessibility AI technologies. And we couldn’t be more excited! This acquisition marks an important moment for our industry, signaling the next evolution of digital accessibility.

For the last few years, we’ve observed the rapid expansion and adoption of digital accessibility across industries, and around the world. As industry leaders, we’ve watched that acceleration with pride, while formulating a vision for a new generation of digital accessibility solutions that will equip every organization, everywhere, to embrace and scale accessibility.

This acquisition is a critical milestone in that journey. The advanced technology we are gaining, fused with our comprehensive solution and deep technical accessibility expertise, will power the future of digital accessibility. Here are just a few of the reasons we’re celebrating today.

We’re meeting the new digital reality head-on

Our approach to digital accessibility has always been to help teams make meaningful progress on the underlying issues in the fabric of their digital content, enabling them to provide usable, reliable experiences to their audiences. That work, which is crucial for ensuring sustainable accessibility, is always going to take time—it’s never going to be a simple box to check.

At the same time, the pace of new digital content creation is staggering. As a result of digital transformation, mid-market and enterprise organizations are now managing dozens, if not hundreds or thousands, of digital experiences at once. In fact, it’s estimated that around 250,000 new websites are created every day.

We embrace the fact that automation, when used thoughtfully and strategically, is fundamental for helping accessibility programs keep pace with this new digital reality. Our vision for a next-generation comprehensive accessibility solution is one powered by advancements in AI and automation. This solution will provide organizations with a faster way to remove barriers for end users in live experiences, keeping pace with the velocity of digital content creation. It will equip them to meaningfully improve accessibility today, while they take the time required to make progress toward lasting, sustainable accessibility and compliance through accessible design, authoring, testing, and code-level remediation.

We’re expanding the accessibility team even further

We’ve always believed that when it comes to digital accessibility, everyone has a role to play. By developing tooling for designers, developers, and quality assurance (QA) professionals, as well as accessibility program managers, we’ve been on a mission to make sure every team across an organization is empowered to contribute to a more accessible future.

As a result of this acquisition, our technology set will become even more versatile. We can help even more team members integrate accessibility into their workstreams by providing tools that align with their skill sets and responsibilities, while continuing to offer the education needed to expand those skill sets and make an even stronger impact over time. We’re especially excited about the opportunity to work on tooling that better engages and enables the owners of digital experiences, such as marketing teams. With the additional capabilities we’re gaining, the Level Access solution will even more effectively support all professionals committed to digital accessibility whenever—and wherever—they’re working, whether in pre-production, post-production, or live environments.

We’re acting on our expertise as industry innovators

For more than 25 years, Level Access has taken a thoughtful, collaborative approach to the products we build and the way in which we help organizations solve for digital accessibility.

Because of this, we firmly believe we are the provider with both the longevity and the deep subject matter expertise to make a true impact on the evolution of digital accessibility with this acquisition. On the one hand, our approach is deeply rooted in the legacy of audit-based, code-level accessibility remediation. On the other hand, we’ve kept a close watch on the development of automated remediation technologies over time, noting their promising aspects, as well as aspects upon which we would improve.

With our experience, we believe that we are perfectly positioned to bring these two approaches to digital accessibility together in a streamlined, effective roadmap that embraces automation while ensuring program growth and maturation over time.

It’s a big undertaking, but we’re excited by the challenge. We’re confident it’s the best way to make the internet accessible. And we will continue iterating on our solution, based on feedback from our customers, to ensure we’re providing the most effective tools and services for lasting progress.

To learn more about our perspective on the impact of this acquisition, check out this video from Level Access’s Founder and CEO, Tim Springer.

Let’s build better, together

Since Level Access’s founding, we have always partnered with and listened to accessibility advocates and people with disabilities. And we’re committed to keeping that dialogue going. We’re grateful to be part of a movement of committed individuals and organizations that work tirelessly to create an accessible digital world.

Transforming the internet isn’t something one team, or one company, can do alone. As we embrace this next phase in the evolution of accelerated, impactful accessibility, we will act thoughtfully, in partnership with advisors throughout our industry and the broader disability community.

We welcome your collaboration and support as we work to ensure we’re delivering a dependable product that advances access to digital information, for everyone, for good.