Silktide
👤 Oliver Emberton (Coding since age 8; ran Silktide since 2001. Turned a viral free site-scanner into two decades of accessibility authority.)🌐 siteoliveremberton.comLinkedIn
Give away a WCAG checker everyone uses; sell organizations continuous whole-site accessibility monitoring.
Will it work? · our read
Rode the mandate. But the scan is now free everywhere (axe, Lighthouse, AI). Silktide must be the compliance system of record, not just the checker — or better-funded Siteimprove wins.
01How the money moves
Give away a free WCAG checker devs use worldwide
→
Regulation (EAA, ADA) forces orgs to prove compliance
→
They buy annual whole-site monitoring
02The numbers
about $3M
2024 revenue
Latka est.
about 2x
rev, 2021-24
Latka est.
4% of rev
max EAA fine
EU EAA
Revenue is a third-party estimate (Latka); Silktide is private and publishes no figures. getlatka
About $3M in 2024, up from $1.6M in 2021 — roughly doubled in three years, all bootstrapped.
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Silktide — company history: Sitescore free tool (2004), dropping web design (2010), pivot to accessibility, Silktide Index (2020).Latka — Silktide: revenue about $3M (2024), up from $1.6M (2021), about 27 staff, bootstrapped (third-party estimate).European Commission — EAA in effect 28 Jun 2025: accessibility mandatory across all 27 EU states, fines up to 4% of revenue.Silktide — free Accessibility Checker: 200+ WCAG 2.2 checks, screen-reader and disability simulators (the free top-of-funnel).Silktide — accessibility solution: whole-site automated testing; customers include NHS, University of Oxford, eBay, Michigan State.
Revenue (about $3M, 2024) is a third-party estimate from Latka, not a first-party disclosure — Silktide is a private UK company that publishes no figures, so it is marked EST / not independently confirmed. The founder, 2001 bootstrapping, free-scanner-to-platform history, customers (NHS, Oxford, eBay, Michigan State), and the regulation timeline (EU Web Accessibility Directive; EAA in force 28 Jun 2025, fines up to 4% of revenue; French lawsuits Nov 2025; Carrefour ordered June 2026) are documented on first-party or official sources. The 'give away the scanner' story is on Silktide's own history page; the read that this is (or is not) a repeatable moat is [our inference]. We never score you.