Emotional accessibility and how it relates to the Digital Service Act

Many digital platforms today prioritise engagement through constant notifications, infinite scrolling and artificial urgency. These design practices encourage automatic behaviour and can undermine wellbeing, particularly among younger users. Emotional accessibility is especially relevant for people who process information differently, experience distress or cognitive overload, or are sensitive to tone, pressure and interaction style.

In the whitepaper The Right to Emotional Access in Digital Systems, the Collective defines emotional access as the ability to interact at one’s own pace, feel understood, and use interfaces that respect different ways of thinking, feeling and communicating. 

Spanish accessibility expert Olga Carreras has noted that this approach closely aligns with the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), which prohibits dark patterns and manipulative interface design, as well as with the forthcoming Digital Fairness Act, aimed at protecting users from exploitative persuasive techniques.

Article 25 of the DSA explicitly bans interfaces that deceive or manipulate users or impair their ability to make free and informed decisions, while Recital 67 clarifies that dark patterns distort user autonomy through visual, auditory or structural design choices. The European Commission has already launched investigations into platforms such as TikTok and Meta over potentially addictive features.

Following the white paper, the Collective released the Emotional Accessibility Framework (EAF), which sets out seven principles to guide designers and policymakers. 

Together, these principles call for digital environments grounded in psychological safety, nuance, adaptability and integrity, helping to foster trust and more sustainable, human‑centred digital systems.