Missing Clarity on EAA - Issue 03-2025

A few months before the start of the European Accessibiltiy Act (EAA), both the A11y Consultants and the affected customers are missing important information on implementation. Some customers are implementing the WCAG, others EN 301549, all customers are asking for a template for the declaration of conformance, and many other questions are unanswered. And it is clear that they will not be answered by June. The best tip is to first implement what is clearly stated in the law. It will probably be many months before market monitoring is established and the first best practices emerge. The A11Y consultants are just as dissatisfied with the situation as the customers. However, most A11Y consultants are not lawyers and most lawyers do not know anything about accessibility. So all we can do is do our best to interpret the regulations until someone says it has to be done differently.

Good news of the month

A US basketball team is offering its blind and visually impaired fans a haptic experience of the game.

Portland Trail Blazers Become First Professional Sports Team to Feature OneCourt’s Haptic Display

The WHO launches first working group on disability and assistive technologies.

WHO/Europe launches first-ever technical advisory group on disability and health

Hearing aids are moving from being a niche product to a mass product. Many technologies have migrated into everyday devices such as noise cancellation. AI will also play a major role. In this way, the hearing aid and headphone markets stimulate each other.

AI, Hearing, And Accessibility, A Market Shift You Can’t Ignore

Airbus presents a concept in which people can travel in their own wheelchair on the plane.

Airbus presents new concept for wheelchair spaces in airplanes

Mac users will be pleased that MS Office 365 can now export tagged PDFs without any detours.

Accessible PowerPoint Presentations

A project aims to make voice control easier for people with speech problems.

Speech Accessibility Project data leads to recognition improvements on Microsoft Azure

Interesting articles

What role could artificial intelligence play for blind people and their independence? This is the subject of an interview with the blind Founder Steve Weidel. Steve wants to start a company that deals with this topic.

Artificial intelligence for accessibility - Interview with Steve Weidel everyone

A new draft for EN 301549 and a demo of a filter tool for requirements are currently available on Gitlab.

Latest EN 301 549 editorial draft

Accessibility Champions are people which push the Topic in organizations. A guide is intended to help build such people and networks.

GUIDE: Building an Accessibility Champions Network

Which WCAG criteria can be applied to native apps? This article addresses this.

Peaky WCAG (Level AA) BANG for your APP A11Y BUCK

Asana and Assistive Labs introduce a hybrid approach to manual and automated accessibility testing.

End-to-end testing leveled up the way Asana engineers think about accessibility

How can software be designed for people with attention issues? That's what a current article is about.

Software accessibility for users with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADHD)

Is personalization the future, as Domingos once claimed? A recent study suggests this. It shows that personal customization of banking apps can improve the quality of use or make it possible to use them in the first place.

Personalization and Accessibility: Are Banking Apps Doing Enough?

DocRaptor is a library for automatically creating tagged PDFs from HTML.

HTML to PDF API

AI chatbots could be a remedy for loneliness or make it worse.

AI chatbots may ease the world’s loneliness (if they don’t make it worse)

A current article shows thoughts on the current development of AI for accessibility and inclusion.

The Current State of AI And What It Means For The Future of Accessibility

More articles

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