Accessibility in the Spotlight: Navigating the New EU Accessibility Requirements and More

Patrick: We're going to have a panel discussion here. We're going to talk about the EAA, the European Accessibility Act, and really its impact on our digital products and our landscape here in Europe, which is really exciting.
I'm going to take a seat to get comfortable with this. I've got three incredible panelists here beside me. Karen Hawkins, human factors engineer, certified accessibility professional with over 13 years experience. You're a member of the IAP careers pathway working group, currently leading the accessibility design practice at Level Access, and you train Global teams and integrating accessibility into really every aspect of their product journeys as well, which is pretty phenomenal. You've traveled here all the way from Toronto, Canada - you're very welcome. So big round of applause for Karen.
And joining Karen we've got Garrett and Mick, both principal digital accessibility engineers at Optum. I'm also from Optum so I do know them very very well. G is a certified professional in web accessibility working really with cross functional teams across Optum to ensure all of our digital properties are fully inclusive. You're also the founding member of Accessibility Ireland. We're going to talk a little bit more about that later on as well, and that's a group that's dedicated to building a community of accessibility advocates here in Ireland. So welcome Garrett.
And last but not least is Mick. Mick is Optum's standards lead and a key contributor to the mobile accessibility Task Force at W3C. You're also a co-founder of Accessibility Ireland - there's three of them, I can see Michael out there as well. So hey Michael, why aren't you on the stage? We give you this pass. And you also lead our digital inclusion Employee Resource Group here in Optum, so you're doing an awful lot for the company which is phenomenal to see. You have extensive experience in accessibility testing compliance and training as well.
So really we've got an expert panel here this morning. I'm very excited to see where we end up. Now of course this is an interactive panel. I'm up here, I've got some questions but really I want to hear from you. We have I believe we've got a roving mic and I can see the questions coming through here as well so please ask questions and I'll throw out to those. Can ask a question live or do it online and we'll bring you in.
Patrick: Let's get started. Karen, we talked about that you lead the design practice at Level Access. What I'm really interested here is can you tell us a little bit about that and how you actually work with clients to actually train them in digital accessibility and even accessible design thinking?
Karen: Thanks. Hi everyone first and foremost. I'm a human factors engineer so really I'm an Industrial Engineer - that's like systems Engineering Process logic statistics that kind of thing with a sub specialty in human factors. I think it's important because that's really shaped my perspective on design and more specifically accessible design.
I have a pretty cool job working at Level Access like I get to work with customers and colleagues and my goal is to elevate this concept of accessible design - not just the nuance of how do you design a button to be accessible, but like how do we make the whole process more efficient and how do we make it more sustainable because we need it to stick. We're not there yet with stickiness.
The question around accessible design thinking, it's not unlike design thinking. What is design thinking? You're trying to get to understand your users and you need to understand what their needs are. You're designing for a diverse set of needs but I think the accessibility extension of that is that the group of users for whom you're designing, well it's probably a larger User Group than what you're used to designing for and then their needs are probably more diverse than what you're used to designing for.
Think about it - you're a designer, you try so hard to design for these users, you try so hard to get to understand them and to get to understand their needs. So now think about that in the context of accessibility and disability. The goal is that we're trying to design for just everybody. We're trying to design absolutely amazing experiences for everybody.
I think what we need to do is - it might sound a little odd - but we need to actually get away from just thinking about the user when we're thinking about accessibility. We can't just be human Centric. That's the thing that sounds odd because we need to start designing for a system. That system includes the human and we're all able and we're all flawed in different ways but it also includes all of the technologies that we use and they help us interact with these experiences that we're designing. So this system I think is the perspective and it's a human factors kind of perspective - think about the person and the technologies that they use in a given environment and we're designing where they interface.
Patrick: Absolutely love that. That's really thinking about the service and holistically I think that that's incredible and it's taking you beyond that digital touch point that we're not just designing for that one-point interaction you're designing for the whole of their experience I think it's pretty incredible.
And getting into digital accessibility Garrett, I'd love to ask you how did you get into this as a career?
Garrett: Good morning everyone. Like most accessibility professionals I know got into it sort of by accident. There's no formal route to becoming accessibility professional I would say.
Prior joining Optum I worked as a graphic designer for another large American corporation where our function was to create marketing materials interactive forms - they were an insurance company so there were lots of those type of materials. And we were then tasked with ensuring that those materials were accessible, something I knew absolutely nothing about. I had to start doing research, I got a mentor.
It had never crossed my mind that there are people that access digital content other than using their eyes and with their hands. So my mind was a bit blown with that. So yeah that's kind of how I got into it to start - PDF documents, quite laborious work. Then I wanted to expand from that into web more generally so that's when I started with Optum around seven and a half years ago and that's kind of what I've been doing since.
Patrick: Fantastic. I always like to talk about you have a Eureka moment and you don't necessarily choose your career you end up in it and it's by attending conferences like this attending even meetups that you get to open your horizons and see that there is wonderful areas to explore and that sort of leads me very nicely Mick into accessibility Ireland. It's a fantastic group and it's really a force of change within Ireland. Maybe can you talk a little bit about the foundation of that group and maybe some of the initial goals that you're hoping to achieve?
Mick: Thanks Patrick and hi everyone. So myself Garrett and Michael Hunton, we set up Accessibility Ireland with the intention really of building Advocates and awareness around digital accessibility specifically in Ireland through networking and education essentially.
We've all worked in the accessibility or as accessibility professionals give or take seven eight years but we've all done work in other countries essentially because that's where legislation and where the jobs are. There's very few accessibility professionals actually working on Irish products unfortunately. So we wanted to bring our - we want to see Irish products accessible essentially and wanted to see what we could do.
So we have a good Network being in the industry long in terms of accessibility professionals but also designers and developers who've gone on the Journey of not knowing about accessibility taking the time to now incorporate it into their work and also people with disabilities. So the idea of bringing those people into a room and talking to designers developers who are starting off and kind of sharing those experiences I think it's a really good starting point.
Patrick: That's fantastic and I think that sort of thread that we're all working for international stage where supporting clients and products internationally, bringing it home to Ireland - Accessibility Ireland is quite special because of course we're going to turn our attention to the European accessibility act and that was originally encoded into law back in 2019 and really it's a directive that mandates that all European Union member states have to implement local laws to ensure that products and services and certain Criterion meet minimum accessibility requirements.
So I'd like to explore that a little bit. Karen, this new legislation that's coming into Europe will have very significant impacts I believe on services and products. Maybe could you give us a little bit of a breakdown about what actually means for us UX professionals and developers and product individuals?
Karen: Sure. I'll begin by saying I'm not a lawyer of course, but I think what's great about the EAA, the European accessibility Act, is that they're trying to enact real change and that I think that's what we need. We need real change. I'm really done with this thing is broken let's fix it. I'm really tired of that.
I also I'm really happy about the extension beyond what we're used to designing for when we think about accessibility which is just digital. So we have the web content accessibility guidelines. I'm hoping you're working towards 2.2 double A - nudge nudge triple A if you can - but now what's been introduced is another technical specification EN301549 of technology.
So we're talking about products and services that affect the public. If your organization serves consumers in any way then like the likelihood is that the EAA affects your organization. What's cool is we're not just talking about digital like I said - software, yeah there's ebooks and banking services, transportation services but ecommerce - there's a lot of ecommerce are there any ecommerce people? So it's a big deal there's also kiosks and point of sale terminals.
So that's what's great about it is that we're now thinking beyond just the minute touch points and what Patrick mentioned is more like service design. We really need to be starting to think about how we're designing absolutely everything and all of their interacting touch points too.
Patrick: Absolutely. Garrett, we are seeing a lot of movement already throughout Europe in relation to the accessibility act. Maybe can you tell us a little about the impact it will have for companies maybe here in Ireland and maybe the impact the broader digital landscape?
Garrett: So I think generally it's going to be really positive for companies because right now selling products and services into Europe you have to consider the national Frameworks of every member State whereas this will unify that they'll all be harmonized.
From a market perspective you're going to essentially if your product is accessible your service is accessible you're going to expand your Market reach because across the European Union there's around over 100 million people with disabilities so right now if you're inaccessible they may not be able to access your product or service.
So I think that's hugely beneficial. If you act early and make your product or service accessible you're going to have a Competitive Edge over those that don't. And also there's a lot of brand loyalty among people with disabilities for companies that you know consider them among themselves their families and friends and also people in favor of inclusion. So that's the impact really for companies and getting in early creates that really big impression and makes a big strong statement as well.
Patrick: Mick I'd like to explore maybe what is the impact of this legislation on the field and the practice of digital accessibility. Do you feel accessibility is going to evolve and change throughout Europe as a result of this?
Mick: I hope so. I think it brings focus it brings - it's the stick legislation is the stick to the carrot. It now makes a very much a big awareness around accessibility and it's going to succeed and fail in terms of how companies implement it.
To Karen's point there is a real service design kind of point of view to it like if you take someone with this legislation now someone who's blind and wants to go on a holiday so you look at the websites and the apps they're going to buy their tickets through - they have to be accessible but when they arrive at the airport and they have to check in their bags and their luggage the kiosks have to be accessible with screen readers. When the announcements to what gate has to go through are they in audio and text format? Are the staff trained? When you exit the airport the transport information is that accessible? So it really brings a much kind of wider picture to it.
In terms of kind of the digital aspect in terms of websites and applications we're looking at WCAG 2.2 likely in June of 2025 level AA and I think when companies are looking and focused on meeting compliance and kind of fixing issues constantly as Karen mentioned you're going to - it's not going to evolve but if you're looking at embedding accessibility throughout your practice at a design developer product owner phase and really doing it properly then I think it's going to be brilliant.
Patrick: Wonderful. Following question and maybe I can open this up to Garrett and Karen as well but Mick I'm wondering will this be a catalyst for Innovation? Will companies really innovate as a result of this or will companies struggle?
Mick: It's a good question. It depends on the company I suppose. I hope so. I think the fact that it's looking at that whole experience and there's various standards not just standards around the digital aspect I'd be hopeful.
Karen: I might just add that what I'm hopeful about is that we'll be focusing more proactively I think. So if we're talking about service design but like I'm a designer so we're at the beginning of the process, not excluding research and requirements, but if we start to design things with accessibility in mind and we're considering again not just the digital but the human Technologies the environment the socio the economic - there's a lot of compounding factors that can go into that design.
All it does is it is just forcing us to think about it earlier in the process. You've heard shift left - I actually don't like that because it implies shifting left of Dev but it's good because it's forcing us to do the work earlier so I think that that's a good thing.
Patrick: Absolutely. Again a reminder I'm seeing some questions coming through already if you do have a question please ask it. We'll get to those questions now in a moment. Maybe Garrett can we explore maybe low effort changes that teams here can start today to implement that will have a high impact on the accessibility of their products and services?
Garrett: Yeah so I guess multiple angles you could look at that. I think one and this is probably quite a boring one but it's collaboration. What I've seen from working on lots of teams is that different disciplines can be quite siloed. So like design work on their piece pass it along and there's no discussion between the different disciplines and that is just a cause for major issues what I find.
So if you come up with a new concept a new design a new prototype have everybody that's part of it around the table at the start discuss because you will find that you be able to like rule out certain things at that point rather than getting them too far down the line and yeah push back as well as part of that. So being able to push back on business requests that maybe don't make sense like UX should feel empowered - they are the professionals. You often hear of businesses essentially designing the experience and designers then just have to like mock it up.
Patrick: Mick maybe let's explore the design aspect. There's a wonderful myth that accessibility can hinder the creative process. Maybe talk to us about that?
Mick: Sure. One of the first accessibility professionals I ever heard speak was Leona Watson at a conference and she gave a talk called "Coding Like I Give a Damn" which I think is a great title. She was also given a talk called "Design Like I Give a Damn" but one of her quotes from it was "accessibility is not challenge to creativity it's a creative Challenge" and I think that's where the focus needs to be.
It's a mindset if you are looking at accessibility through the lens of "I have to" restriction based on these standards and where if you're looking at what Karen mentioned earlier accessibility kind of enhances the user experience that I'm going to create a site or create a product for everyone and a lot of what accessible does is for everyone.
If you take something like captions or transcripts really important for someone who's deaf in terms of being able to understand what's being said but how many of us have turned on captions when the environment's very loud or you can't understand the accent or you've relied on transcripts when you missed a meeting and you can go back so it really enhances the user experience.
Patrick: Absolutely absolutely and of course we have the wonderful idea of Universal Design around that as well that we designed once and it's applicable everywhere we shouldn't have to design interfaces for particular use cases it's across the board.
When we design products of course we have to use Design Systems and Karen you're going to be giving a bit of a deep dive on this later on today. You're going to talk about how we can create better accessible Design Systems so maybe let's talk about that. Maybe can you talk about how we can do that in a nutshell and maybe just tease a little bit about what you're going to cover in that session?
Karen: Sure it's actually an eight hour Workshop! When we look at Design Systems I think there's two main takeaways. One is that we should be considering accessibility as early as possible so it even starts in your Styles setting up your style guides - things like making sure that you have your border radii the thicknesses and shadows like setting up all your tokens do that because we need to use those tokens when we start to design our components.
The interesting thing I found is that our accessibility requirements and responsibilities they're different at the different levels of the design system. So like for components the focus is on designing amazing States all the different permutations all the different variations so not just focus State not just hover state but put like real devotion into designing those States.
That's very different than when you're designing your patterns like toolbars and product cards and that kind of thing. This is where we're thinking about the reading order the focus order Focus management and if I do a particular thing does Focus stay here does it go somewhere else what should really happen and then feedback as well so not just visual feedback but auditory tactile that kind of thing.
And then we go up one more level to like you're building your page templates. Well now we have an opportunity to focus on optimizing as many navigational strategies as possible and making sure that people are oriented at all times. There's a lot to all of that because there's so many different types of components and patterns that we need to think about. But we need to start at the basics learn those Basics and then I think that you can apply them to even larger and more complicated pieces.
Patrick: There's a lot there and an 8 Hour Master Class I'm sure is just the tip of the iceberg.
I'm going to ask a very difficult question this is one that's coming from the audience. Karen, you mentioned around about WCAG 2.2 and some other standards that's coming out of the EAA. Question that's come from the audience here is there's currently no detailed testable criteria to confirm whether a product has satisfied all those requirements of the accessibility act. How do we address that? Is that being addressed?
Patrick: I might defer to my - it's it doesn't explicitly say WCAG but you can assume that it's going to be WCAG.
Mick: Yeah so just if you're compliant with WCAG you should be good for the EAA from a digital perspective anyway.
Patrick: And it's 2.1?
Mick: The latest version - I'd say 2.2 by June 2025 it will be 2.2.
Patrick: Perfect okay so I think that that's really it just conform aim for WCAG 2.2 double A and a possible triple A is what we're saying right now. Perfect and of course and don't get bugged down by standards and what you have to do start small take a few key practices and start there. But yeah WCAG 2.2 absolutely I think it's showing the willingness to make that change that's what we're looking for here is we're not doing it because the law is saying it we're doing it because it's the right thing it's Universal Design and we're designing for everyone.
Maybe Garrett can you talk about from a developer experience what tools could developers be using now and even designers what tools could we be using now to help us?
Garrett: Okay so the tools or what I encourage Developers to do are sort of four key steps when they're doing their work is to parse their code using a HTML Checker very simple thing to do it can catch some issues which are potential issues for assisted technology.
Run some automated Checkers now automated Checkers only catch a small fraction of issues but again good starting point and there are numerous out there that people can avail of.
A big one is test the keyboard. Test all your work with the keyboard this is one that people just don't do for whatever reason and there's I guess a certain irony that when computers first came out it was all keyboard and there was no mouse and we've sort of flipped that now to the point where some sites don't work with the keyboard at all. So test the keyboard that goes for designers too I think it's important to understand the interactions of the components that you're building out so that's definitely a high priority one.
And lastly I would say if you can try it with a screen reader. It's hugely beneficial to see things from a different perspective or hear things from a different perspective.
Patrick: Fantastic. Mick maybe we'll talk about trend Innovation is there anything right now that you're excited about?
Mick: Yeah loads. As well as a Hot Topic is AI and machine learning but the thing that really excites me is what we kind of mentioned a little bit - is bringing accessibility throughout the product experience and it's kind of a shift I see in accessibility Engineers roles that we're not just testing at the end and that's where accessibility gets very hard very costly and kind of pushes it to the side.
Where the role of an engineer Now is really - should be should be more and hopefully it is becoming more of a trend but educating teams breaking that like WCAG is a very technical documentation so it's breaking that down into manageable checklist for each owner for a product owner having the conversations at the very beginning what to design.
If you break down that success criteria within WCAG and give it kind of primary ownership there's about probably 30% with development so if you're leaving it to the very end then you can solve 70% potentially of issues roughly through product through UX content and visual design. Have it throughout the whole process have it all there.
Patrick: And Karen there's a question that came from the audience a few moments ago and it was around EAA asking is it applicable to existing websites and applications products and services that exist right now?
Karen: Yeah that's a great question so anything that's going to be live as of June 28th 2025 that's when the EAA is going to apply so anything that you're currently working on or anything that's in your road map that will be live post that date you want to make sure that you're applying your technical specifications now.
Patrick: Okay we have about five minutes left or so so we're going to slowly begin to wrap up this but a quick fire question is panelists - anyone who'd like to answer this - what really is one thing that surprised you when you first started working in accessibility?
Mick: Push back. When you go into full-time accessibility role where someone is asking for accessibility you don't expect people to push back and companies to push back but it it again it comes through awareness and education but yeah push back.
Patrick: What is the biggest myth that you've seen out there?
Karen: Has anyone heard of the blueberry analogy? The blueberry analogy states like if you're going to bake a blueberry muffin you can't actually bake the muffin and then put the blueberries in afterwards right and so the analogy is that accessibility is the blueberries you can't end with accessibility.
I think it's served its purpose up until now. I have a different perspective in that the problem with is that the blueberry is finite and it has bounds and I think rather we need to think about accessibility more like the flour in the muffin that you have to start with the flour it's the base of the whole thing right and really it's the essence of your muffin every bite has flour and so the point of that is that accessibility is everywhere and it's not even a thing that's the point it's not a thing like we just take care of it just like all of our other functional non-functional requirements it's just there and absolutely everybody has a role to play in seeing that happen.
Patrick: That's fantastic. I see we've got a few more minutes I just want to again just try some questions from the audience here. There's a question here about how should we tackle products and UIs that are built on old stack Legacy Frameworks that may not be compliant with WCAG 2.1? How would you recommend we handle that situation?
Garrett: So as part of the EAA every site will have to have an accessibility statement so on that statement you can say the current state of the site and your plans to address things so while there may be some things that are difficult to make accessible that won't be a good enough excuse like you need to be a plan for the future as to what you're going to do to address it.
Patrick: So for the time being maybe no urgent action but watch your road map like where you going absolutely.
I think this is really really interesting question here about EU countries can add their own rules and I know Ireland can have some quite severe consequences so I'd love to maybe explore that for a moment. Some countries can be more strict from an Irish perspective potentially you know if Ireland is planning to implement any stricter rules and can we talk about the impact potentially and again we're not here to to sort of scare people into having to act immediately but maybe let's just entertain that doomsday scenario what could the worst thing that could happen?
Garrett: Sure so from if companies are non-compliant generally in the EAA there can be fines you can have your product or service pulled from the market or you could be banned from selling in the market entirely. Hopefully it won't come to that again kind of what Mick said earlier we don't want this to be the driver for change. In Ireland there will be potential fines up to €60,000 or imprisonment of up to 18 months but yeah again hope we don't get to that stage - people just do the right thing.
Patrick: That's a lot. And do we know whether Ireland is going to implement any stricter implementations of this?
Garrett: That's all we're aware of right now.
Mick: I think the part that the EAA Act is pushing is that if they find that you're failing is to help you improve first. It's not to hit you straight away with fines it's to try to guide you in the right direction.
Patrick: I'd like to talk for a moment about testing and you mentioned about an exciting development is artificial intelligence and let's talk about a myth and let's talk about the role of automated testing when it comes to conforming and check marking and saying yes we comply. Will AI transform How We Do automated testing will AI transform how we are doing compliance verification?
Mick: I'm not a fortune teller so I'm not 100% sure but at the moment the thing with - there is a use for automated testing for sure if you're a developer and it's a great tool to start finding issues. Companies will tell you different things in terms of how much automated tool is going to catch in my experience it's generally around 30%.
So and the problem with just solely focusing on automated tools is you're not getting the full picture you're not seeing everything and you're not actually embedding accessibility into your processes you're doing that thing of finding issues at the end and it's always a lot more difficult to to go back.
Patrick: Yeah that's right it's not just throw it out at the end verify it the key messages integrated throughout the entire process from that initial product brief to the design to ideation and it's something that I know we're taking very seriously about integrating DEI into everything and accessibility of course is a key factor in that.
Another question that's come from the audience Karen I'd like to ask is hiring can we see this legislation impacting how we hire product designers and developers into the future will be looking for people with necessary skills certifications will it impact hiring?
Karen: I would hope so yeah. So as mentioned I'm working on a working group with the IAP the International Association of Accessibility Professionals sorry and it's about career progression so I'm kind of on the cusp of where we're trying to go with it.
I think the problem is that we don't have clear requirements in order to hire lots of different types of functions and so we're championing UX which I think is an interesting function to begin with we're trying to Define all the different requirements like the skill sets the competencies that that we require for these different functions.
I think the legislation coming in is - I think all it's doing is giving us a broader awareness of it right and maybe what it'll do it'll help us expand what those skill sets and competencies are we're focusing on digital right now so yeah I think it'll help expand but there's things in the works. The IAP has been working on this for a long time it's not out yet but there really isn't anything that we can point people to right like organizations are kind of making it up and a lot of the wrecks out there they're not accurate like we want a unicorn well they don't exist right because each function has different responsibilities. I can't do what a Dev does they really can't do what I do right we need each other and we need to collaborate so until we have those clear definitions I think we're misserving the market.
Patrick: Fantastic. Just follow on from that I think a key part in Ireland and all countries is the hiring of accessibility professionals or building an accessibility Champion within your within your group.
We've got about two minutes left this time flew by and of course we can carry on the conversation afterwards. In the next two minutes very briefly rapid fire if there's one thing one knowledge that you can impart upon the audience here and watching online what would that one thing be?
Karen: I think everyone needs to test their own work right every single person should hold themselves accountable for the accessibility of their output that's everybody and it's not just your product development team you can extrapolate that to the larger organization every email you write Every Word document PowerPoint like you're responsible for the accessibility even to your colleagues to your communities as well as your customers right so test your own work make sure that whatever you're outputting is you know as good a job as you can do.
Garrett: Use a screen reader try it out. Everybody has a screen reader on their phones that are in their pockets right now or if you're on your desktop computer there are free versions NVDA if you're on Windows or voice over if you're on Mac it'll completely change your perspective of how the user interface works so it's very valuable.
Mick: Be curious kind of following on from that learn about the why. Why you know look into assistive Technology Google down the road has an assistive Technology Center that you can go for free and learn why how people are using Vision Ireland have a wayfinder Center and do things like Garrett mentioned test the screen reader and go to talks where people with disabilities are going through their experiences.
Patrick: Fantastic. Karen where can we find out more about yourself how can we follow you?
Karen: Check me out on LinkedIn Karen Hawkins. You can use some keywords like Toronto engineer that kind of thing. I'm not the romance novelist so find me another way. LinkedIn's the best.
Patrick: There you go.
Garrett: Yeah likewise LinkedIn's the best and you can also follow accessibility Ireland on LinkedIn as well.
Patrick: Fantastic and Mick?
Mick: Yeah LinkedIn same again.
Patrick: Everyone a big round of applause for our panelist this morning exceptional exceptional thank you so so much and really it is a tough provoking discussion and there's great resources connect with the team connect with the groups and yeah thank you so so much.
All: Thank you. Thanks. Cheers. Thank you.