Making sure your software is accessible is fast becoming a must rather than a nice-to-have, and Evinced is one of a wave of startups helping make that happen. The company is about to expand to Europe, where new accessibility regulations are about to take effect, and has raised $55 million to fuel the expansion.
Evinced is a suite of tools that integrates throughout the software development stack, making accessibility metrics and solutions available throughout. So when an engineer puts together a UI or component, they don’t have to wait the monthly accessibility code review to find out it won’t work with screen readers — Evinced’s products monitor the process and flag it, offering options on the spot.
As regulations and public sentiment lean toward better accessibility — an increasingly broad term that encompasses all kinds of disability and access issues — those who have championed the principle before now are in pole position to grow their business.
“The tech trends are in our favor, the legal trends are in our favor. Everyone is realizing this market is real — and our approach is winning,” said Evinced CEO and founder Navin Thadani. He noted that many of the Fortune 500 are Evinced customers.
That approach, to be clear, is to integrate closely with developers’ existing processes, as opposed to something a little more occasional or hands-off, he said. “We’ve expanded across the entire development lifecycle: design and development of component libraries, testing, production monitoring — the whole spectrum.”
“There are many others that are service-like companies, giving you advice on your programs, devices, products — some do testing and audits. But nobody is really looking at it the way we are; we are still, at this point, the only pure tech play in the accessibility space,” Thadani asserted.
At the very least his company is certainly one of the best funded. Evinced raised $17 million in 2021 when it was starting out, then $38 million more in 2022 to build out its tools. And now it has this $55 million C round, led by Insight Partners, with participation from M12, BGV, Capital One Ventures, Engineering Capital, and new investor Vertex Ventures.
Thadani was very clear about where this money is going, no doubt to the joy of his investors. “I have a very concrete plan for my company, with three significant areas of investment,” he explained.
First is research and development, where Evinced is focusing on building out a generative AI product portfolio. Of course, everyone is doing this in a way, but accessibility-focused coding is something that an assistant AI may be genuinely helpful with.
Second is “customer success,” in other words continuing work with existing clients who need support, new products, and so on. And third is expanding to Europe.
“They just passed the EAA, and come June of 2025, it’s going to start getting enforced: Anyone doing business in Europe, all your assets need to be accessible. That’s huge, obviously a big tailwind for our business,” Thadani said. “But a local market is a local market; you have to have sales and support on the ground. Europe is big, and you need to invest properly.”
Expect adoption of accessibility-focused tools like Evinced to accelerate as companies continue to realize that it’s not just the law to build with accessibility in mind, it’s just simply a good idea.
