Newsletter

Just a few months before the Accessibility Strengthening Act (BFSG) comes into effect, both BF consultants and their clients lack crucial information for its implementation. The expert is astonished, and the specialist is puzzled. Some clients are implementing WCAG, others EN 301549; all clients are asking for a template for the declaration of conformity, and many more questions remain unanswered. It's clear that these questions won't be resolved by June. The best advice is to first implement what is clearly stated in the law. It will likely be many months before market surveillance is established and initial best practices emerge. The BF consultants are just as dissatisfied with the situation as their clients. However, most BF consultants are not lawyers, and most lawyers are not experts in accessibility. Therefore, we can only do our best to interpret the regulations until someone says that a different approach is necessary.

Good news of the month

An American basketball team offers its blind and visually impaired fans a tactile experience of the game.

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

The WHO is launching its first working group on disability and assistive technologies.

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

Hearing aids are evolving from a niche product to a mass-market product. Many technologies have found their way into everyday devices, such as noise cancellation. AI will also play a major role. In this way, the hearing aid and headphone markets are mutually reinforcing each other.

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

Member of Parliament Dennis Sonne gave a speech in easy-to-read language in the state parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia: perhaps the first easy-to-read language speech in a German parliament.

Dennis Sonne gave a speech in simplified language in the state parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Airbus presents a concept that allows people to travel in their own wheelchairs on airplanes.

Airbus presents new concept for wheelchair spaces in aircraft

Mac users will be pleased to know that tagged PDFs can now be exported directly with MS Office 365. Unfortunately, we don't know if this feature is already available in Germany or if it also applies to Word, as we don't have a Mac ourselves.

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 topic of an interview with Steve Weidel, who is blind. Steve wants to found a company that deals with this issue.

Artificial Intelligence for Accessibility – Interview with Steve Weidel

One article deals with how content can be hidden from screen readers.

Hiding content from screen readers – when, why and how

Instead of designing for the average person, who doesn't exist, it should be designed for vulnerable groups, according to this article.

Designing for the vulnerable means designing for everyone.

Market monitoring for the Accessibility Strengthening Act will be centralized in Magdeburg for all federal states. This article summarizes what is currently known about the situation and future tasks.

Who checks for accessibility?

A recent article shows what the BFSG means for the financial sector.

What the Accessibility Strengthening Act means for the financial sector

This article compares different methods of automated accessibility testing.

Automated accessibility tests: Three approaches and additional considerations

This article clarifies that framework and support services under the BFSG must also be barrier-free.

EU regulations for website accessibility

The other contributions are in English: Currently, a new draft for EN 301549 and a demo of a filter tool for requirements are available on Gitlab.

Latest EN 301 549 editorial draft

Accessibility Champions are individuals within organizations who systematically promote the topic. This guide aims to help develop such individuals and networks.

GUIDE: Building an Accessibility Champions Network

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

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 problems? That's the topic of a recent article.

Software accessibility for users with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADHD)

Is personalization the future, as Domingos once claimed? A recent study suggests it is. It shows that personal customizations in banking apps can improve the user experience or even make the apps usable 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 they could exacerbate it.

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

A recent article presents 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

• A disability-inclusive Artificial Intelligence Act: A guide to monitor implementation in your
• Focus styles and programmatic focus
• The Book on Accessibility
• Empowering or Excluding: New Research and Principles for Inclusive AI
• Using large language models to accelerate communication for eye gaze typing users with ALS
• W3C Publishes Collaboration Tools Accessibility User Requirements (CTAUR) Note.