EU creates agency to fund open accessibility infrastructure

A Blind Ant design fiction. EDAI does not exist (yet). Nothing here is a real announcement, and no real person or institution is quoted.

Brussels, 16 March 2027. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The European Digital Accessibility Infrastructure agency (EDAI) opened today with a mandate to fund, procure and maintain open-source assistive technology as shared European infrastructure.

EDAI has been set up to answer a question that the European Accessibility Act left open: when an organisation must provide accessible services, what does it run on, and who is accountable when that software is owned by a company outside Europe?

What EDAI will do

Fund upstream open-source accessibility projects directly, with grants that carry no control over their roadmaps.
Run a framework tender so that public bodies and regulated businesses can buy deployment, training and support for open assistive technology from approved suppliers.
Publish deployment guidance, security reviews and procurement templates, free to use.

The 40/40/20 clause

Every supplier approved under the framework must accept one standard term, known in the tender documents as the 40/40/20 clause. Net surplus from any contract that depends on a funded open-source project is divided as follows:

40% to the upstream project, paid into a ring-fenced fund that the project alone controls, with no conditions on how it is spent.
40% retained by the supplier, to cover growth, risk and reinvestment.
20% to an Add-On Commons, a pool paid to the independent developers who build and maintain extensions, administered by a panel of blind and partially sighted developers.

"Net surplus" means revenue less direct delivery costs, independently audited and published every year. Suppliers may not hold a seat on, or influence, the upstream project's roadmap as a condition of any payment, and no single supplier's payments may exceed a set proportion of an upstream project's annual funding.

First project in scope

EDAI's first funded project is NVDA, the free, open-source screen reader maintained by NV Access.

"We are not buying a product. We are making sure that a piece of infrastructure millions of people already depend on has a stable footing, and that the companies who earn money from it pay their way," said Marit Solheim-Vance, EDAI's founding director. (Marit Solheim-Vance is a fictional person.)

Timetable

The framework tender opens in May 2027. Contracts are expected to be awarded within fourteen months of that date, subject to the usual procedure.

Notes

EDAI is a fictional agency. It has no connection to any EU institution.

NV Access and NVDA are named as a plausible first case. NV Access has not been consulted and has not endorsed this piece.

This work is released under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence. Take it, change it, build it.

More about this

This is one Object of Red DOG, a Piece at Blind Ant.
Red DOG launches as first approved supplier under EDAI's open accessibility framework: A fictional launch release for Red DOG, the first company to sell support for NVDA under EDAI's 40/40/20 clause, with a realistic order of work for making it real.

About the author

Blind Ant is written and run by Charlotte Joanne. About Blind Ant says more.