Pioneering a New Era in Accessible Technology

Ever wondered how accessibility standards are shaping up in Europe? Tune in to hear from Susanna Laurin, the dynamic director of the Funka Foundation, as she uncovers the creative origins of the foundation's name and its pivotal role in empowering people with disabilities across Europe. With a wealth of experience in accessibility and her instrumental efforts in co-founding the IAAP, Susanna offers a deep dive into the foundation's transformative work, including groundbreaking research, consultancy, and the development of accessible e-learning platforms. Gain insights into her influential role in updating the European Accessibility Act and pioneering initiatives in mobile accessibility and accessible gaming.

Explore the contrasting dynamics of accessibility legislation across the Atlantic, as we discuss the varying approaches between the U.S. and Europe. Delve into the importance of strategic planning and collaboration with disabled persons organizations, and discover the value of user-centered testing in accessibility projects. From highlighting often-overlooked groups like people who stutter to discussing the potential of AI to revolutionize accessibility, this episode is filled with thought-provoking insights. Join us for an inspiring conversation that envisions a future where personalized assistive technologies thrive while respecting user privacy.

Chapters

• 0:00 Empowering Accessibility and Inclusion in Europe
• 13:55 Corporate Trust in Accessibility Industry
• 18:35 Broadening Perspectives on Accessibility Innovation

Transcript

Debra Ruh: 0:00

Hello everyone and welcome to AXS Chat. I'm being joined by my regular buddy, antonio, and Neil is still in Thailand, and I believe it's one of his last nights in Thailand, and so he did try to join, but his in-laws decided that he was not going to join us today. That's all we'll say on that topic, but hope you're having fun, neil. So we have. And Antonio, do you want to add something there? Best, not to okay. So we have a guest that's. Do you want to add something there? Best, not to Okay.

Debra Ruh: 0:25

So we have a guest that's coming back today and we're very excited to have Susanna Loren back on the show. And Susanna Loren is the director of the Funka Foundation, and she told us on air and I'm going to get her to talk a little bit more what Funka means in her language. She's also the European representative for IAAP and G3ICT, and then I'm not going to even try to do this part, but she's doing a very, very important job sharing European standards, and I know I'm saying that wrong. So, susanna, please tell the audience who you are again. But welcome back to the program. We love the work you and your team are doing. We love it, thank you. Thank you. So do you mind telling the audience a little bit more about who you are?

Susanna Laurin: 1:11

Thank you, Debra, and thanks for having me again and a pleasure to be here. Of course, as always. A little bit about me. We started with the name the Funka Foundation, so we are an independent research organization and the word Funka may sound strange to an English audience or English speaking audience, but it's really a play with words. So it's part of ability, so it's like function functionality is the same root of that word and so it's ability and able. And then also it's kind of what you say when something is really working, you say yes, I made it. So that's when we also say something is functioning and that is kind of the play with words. And every university has a Funka department, which is kind of a department for people with disabilities, students with disabilities and quite a few other newspapers, TV shows, radio programs, I think, and organizations have the same name. So that's the root of that name.

Susanna Laurin: 2:04

And we are a small team based out of Stockholm, Sweden, but we have staff and colleagues all over Europe and we are focusing on European research on accessibility, disability, inclusion and everything that has to do with that.

Susanna Laurin: 2:18

But kind of the hub or the baseline of everything is to make sure that people with disabilities are empowered by accessibility or policy, work or legislation or standards or every measure we can make sure to push in the right direction.

Susanna Laurin: 2:37

That the idea is really to empower people with disabilities, both in the countries where we have projects but also at EU level, and one of our long-term collaborations or organizations that we work very closely with is the European Disability Forum, which is the umbrella organization for all the disabled persons organizations in Europe. So we also do consultancy. We do what every accessibility expert company do, with testing and auditing and document remediation and too much training, I would say, and we're actually right now building an e-learning platform of our own just to make sure that it is as accessible as we want it to be, because we have been trying so many of them and we were never really happy. So in a couple of months we hope to be able to also provide training, like on-demand training, which will take some of the heavy lift out of after my team. So I know they will. They will love it.

Debra Ruh: 3:29

Susanna, I know you also are going to tell us about the chair, but before you move away from this part, do you mind just telling the audience? You have a lot of experience with accessibility and disability inclusion, so can you just explore that a little bit more, because I hope that people have heard of you, because you have done so much for our community. You are leading efforts that are really really changing things. We really appreciate it. Do you mind just tell us a little bit about that as well before you go to the third item.

Susanna Laurin: 4:00

Yeah, so I'm one of the dinosaurs really in our industry and I always have a bad conscience that I haven't been better at mentoring young people and I hope to have time to do that in the future because I think we all in my generation we really should do that and I haven't been the best in doing it. But I have a visual impairment myself. I have been around in the accessibility community for a long time, but before that I was doing work for the visually impaired organization in Sweden and then I went to the independent living, the global independent living movement, and worked for them. And then I've been building a commercial accessibility company for consultancy for 18 years. And then I stepped down as a CEO to take care of my sister who had a severe disability. So I built up really a personal assistance company which turned to be more of another career, but that was just to make her life work. And then I continued in parallel with the research and then, um well, we have the, the research institution, or the uh, the, the foundation, started in 2006, so that has probably been around for a long time, but I was one of the co-founders of IWP back in 2012 or something.

Susanna Laurin: 5:12

I know the anniversary is 14, but we actually started earlier and I've been doing standards in Europe at the EU level for many, many years and I'm now chairing the organization or the group that is taking care of the update, review and creating new standards for the European Accessibility Act. So that is maybe the most good thing I've ever done, but it's also a key position to have in Europe right now when this legislation is pushing forward. We were also behind not me alone, but me and my team at that time were behind the first mobile accessibility guidelines that kind of went into the BBC guidelines and all of that and starting that. And we also did accessible gaming very early on and started. Some of the initiatives have been going on around that.

Susanna Laurin: 5:58

So I think I've been kind of having my fingers in quite a few different things around accessibility.

Susanna Laurin: 6:03

But right now I myself and we are focusing more on the cognitive part, so kind of the soft, human things, with the design and UX, design and content, and less with the technology, because we think that is already. There's so many good tools, there are a lot of good developers and more and more is actually being built into the systems already and I think the technical part of accessibility should be done kind of by default, instead of first creating something that is not accessible and then remediating it afterwards. So we do that when we need to, but I think that's kind of where the market is rather mature. But when it comes to the more like how the interface works and the intersection between UX and accessibility, there's still a lot more to be done, and especially at the research level and raising awareness and knowledge and really training people on this and also the user testing part. So those are also some of the research projects that we have been leading around making sure that the next generation UX designers know how to make good user testing with people with disabilities.

Susanna Laurin: 7:01

So that's kind of what we're focusing on right now, you're just not sleeping, okay, and kind of where we're focusing right now, you're just not sleeping, okay and no, we are not sleeping right now.

Antonio Santos: 7:12

So, susanna, welcome. You briefly mentioned the European Accessibility Act. I know we are 25 big year. As someone that monitors and looks at online trends, I observed that during the development, during the GDPR years, there was a huge noise about GDPR all over the place, all over the media, but I haven't heard the same noise around the European Accessibility Act. Is there an explanation?

Susanna Laurin: 7:40

for it? Well, I don't have the scientific answer to that, but if I'm allowed to guess, I would say that there are a couple of things. So GDPR is an EU regulation whereas the European Accessibility Act is a directive. So that's the difference in the level of the legislation. And the GDPR comes with heavy penalties. That was really pushed from the start, that if you don't do what we want you to do, then you will be fined. And in accessibility, this is more of an inner market directive. So the idea is not to punish but to make sure that the European companies that sell ICT products have harmonized standards to make sure that we have a good commercial situation where we can have good opportunities and kind of facilitate and foster innovation in Europe in order to, I think, beat the US. I think is the between the lines, but really making sure that there's an economic push for accessibility.

Susanna Laurin: 8:40

So the European Accessibility Act and also the current legislation in Europe there's a misunderstanding that this is for people with disabilities. That's not really the case. The whole logic behind this legislation is both of them is that they're in a market and that is really how we could push them to be accepted by the member state If this would have stayed in the kind of social vulnerable groups. We want to be nice to people. Csr that would never had been born. So we need to move the focus to financials, saying that we can earn more money. The companies can do cross-border sales, we can. It's easier for companies to innovate and create new things if we have harmonized standards and the same laws across Europe, and this will make it more profitable. And then we can have a higher level of digitalization or whatever, and then societies will save money from public sector point and also earn money from the commercial point of view. So that is the driver here and when or if, but when we succeed with this, it will also be better for people with disabilities. So that's kind of the whole logic to this legislation and I think that is what we're trying to push.

Susanna Laurin: 9:50

And also, if you look at the timeline for GDPR, the big thing that happened was after the application. So let's talk again in June to see what happens, because most people wake up when it's too late. This is when we will have the big push, and even if it's not as big as GDPR, it's still a lot. I mean, we see new companies popping up every week and we see the big ICT companies all of a sudden, people who used to be UX designers or usability experts or they had all sorts of titles a month ago. Now they're all of a sudden accessibility experts. I'm not sure how you got me, but they have that in their titles. So companies understand that this is happening and we and many others. We do not speak about anything else than this legislation.

Antonio Santos: 10:44

I want to make an observation that still relates to GDPR is that when different countries end up creating small different nuances on GDPR, that end up making the work difficult. Now, if you work across borders, so if you have a startup in Germany you start to realize that the GDPR in Ireland or in Portugal is slightly different. So you start to realize that the GDPR in Ireland or in Portugal is slightly different. So you also need to consider that. Is there something similar that is happening with the European Accessibility Act?

Susanna Laurin: 11:14

Yes, there will be differences, but I wouldn't focus on that because the differences are rather small and it's more on exactly how the enforcement is going to be done, how the monitoring is happening and the penalties. The penalties will differ between, or the way they implement the penalties differ between different member states, but the requirements are the same, the scope is the same, the timeline is the same. I mean the important things are done the same way. But I mean European countries are different. We have different maturity levels in the digital space. We have different traditions. Some of us have had laws on accessibility for many years, some are quite new to the topic and there are economic differences. So I think I know big companies hate this, but I think there is a logic to a little bit of flexibility and a little bit of allowing a little bit of flexibility between the countries. I think that makes sense. In Europe we are not exactly the same.

Antonio Santos: 12:06

Before giving the microphone again to Deborah, you mentioned that some people might wake up too late. If someone is waking up now, what should they start considering?

Debra Ruh: 12:18

Yeah, and you could call me no, but can you give me your email address?

Susanna Laurin: 12:25

So I would say you need to do three things. You need to look at where are we now? You need to kind of do an analysis of not only how accessible are we, but what internal resources do we have? What knowledge do we have? Are we completely naked here and have no clue about anything, or do we in our team have people that actually have some kind of knowledge about this kind of knowledge about this? And when you have done that assessment, then you can okay, do we need to go externally to look for expertise, or do we train people, or probably a combination of the two, but I mean just to know what you're doing, so you don't start panicking, fixing things, but really start looking inwards, but do that analysis before you start moving. And then there is a training or doing all of that, and I think most companies do that in a good way.

Susanna Laurin: 13:09

What they lack is the third part, which is processes, because no one who doesn't have a smart workflow and an internal process on how, what do we do when we create something new or update? Where in this process is accessibility happening? Who has the sign-off about accessibility? It's an internal workflow and processing. That is what is missing, I think, in most organizations that fail with accessibility. They pour money over this topic, but they do it in a not-so-clever way, and so processes that is where I would you know. So this internal analysis, training and fixing with finding the right and, of course, iwp certified experts, certainly, and then make sure that you have a workflow or process that works.

Debra Ruh: 13:55

I would also say that one thing that we saw when we went to Europe. I remember the Americans and others we went to Europe to talk about this after we had done our Section 508 law and I remember just being really surprised. I realize now how extremely naive I was, but at the time didn't know that. So I remember going over there representing I actually represented HP at the time with Michael Takamura, and we were trying so hard to explain to the Europeans, us Americans, you know how the corporations had really worked with us and they're really helping and they'd gotten in and they'd solved these things with us. The community and the Europeans, I remember, were so skeptical and they're like, yeah, we don't think so, we're not going to, we're not going to build this all the way around with corporate. We're not going to do it that way. We are going to decide A long time ago this conversation like 2004 or something. But I was surprised as an American, as a naive American, at how my perception was that Europeans didn't really trust the corporate brands At the time. As an American, I just did not realize how much I had been fed that corporate good, corporate good. I just did not realize it and, by the way. There's a lot of good things about corporations, but I'm not as naive as I used to be and I just want to say I am so proud of the Europeans, I am so proud of you guys for doing it, for taking a look at what we did in the States and what others did and looking at the standards and the legislation and figuring out a way that you could do it where it feels like we're working together. Because what we did in the US criticizes, if you want, I don't care, it's the way we do it. We put laws on the books and then we sue each other and we try to pound them out and figuring it out. And corporations run the United States, just like other countries definitely run the United States here, and we know that by the election we just had that's fine, that's just the way things work. But I think that what is missed by these corporations and I just want to say this, susanna, because what I see as these corporations try to figure out how to do this and they are worried about these laws they are definitely worried about these directives, they're very worried, but they make the mistakes of trying to do it themselves or working with the wrong people.

Debra Ruh: 16:09

I remember a group silly little story here in the United States big transportation agency here in Virginia, and somebody told them that people that were blind weren't able to use the bus schedules. And so they're like, oh no, no and, by the way, you should say, oh no, no, get out there and fix it. But what they did was they took their bus schedules and they made them Braille. It cost about $25,000 at the time, ridiculous, regardless. That's what happened. And then, of course, as soon as it was delivered to them, like the very next day, it was already out of date because bus schedules constantly change. So they were trying so hard to do the right thing. But I think it's a wonderful example of you cannot guess at this. It is very important to come up with.

Debra Ruh: 16:55

Susanna said she mentioned three things. But if you don't have a strategic plan of how you're really going to do this, you're going to waste money, you're going to waste time, you're going to make your employees mad, you're going to make customers mad. Take the time, get it right, your plan right at the beginning and then continue to update that plan as you go. And that's one reason why I love Susanna, because she knows how to help you do that, so do others. But not everybody knows. So I just wanted to make that comment, susanna, because that's where I see brands constantly fail and I think I would turn that around a bit.

Susanna Laurin: 17:25

I think one of the problems we have had, at least in European industry, accessibility industry is that we lack the big companies. We lack the money and the funding. Most of the good work done here is done by disabled persons organizations, one-man companies or one-woman companies, very small organizations, and they're brilliant, but it just doesn't scale. And they're brilliant, but it just doesn't scale. So that's the other kind of. You know, it's a balance between. So we need both really, but what is so important to me and what I think my team is good at and what we really desire to do. I mean, first of all, we are not for profit, but that doesn't mean that we don't have the muscles, because we do research and we do studies and we work for the commission, for the parliament, we are everywhere where it counts to be. So it's not like we are super small, but we don't need to make money all the time because we are funded by the research we do, which is nice. So we say no to things if we don't like the way the companies work, if they come to us with ideas that we don't approve of, we're not driven by kind of making the most money out of it and also that the closeness to the disability organizations. So really to always work with the users and not assuming that you know what a user needs just because you've met one blind guy last week.

Susanna Laurin: 18:46

We constantly work with the users and have the network of testers and so on. So if you are asking us to do a test, we will never deliver a test that is only done by experts. I mean, all of our staff are IWP certified so they know what they're doing. But we would never, ever give you a report on anything without having our network of testers who have, you know, all sorts of disabilities and who are working for us and paid, always paid. But I mean they are not experts, they are just the man in the street kind of users, but with disabilities, and we have them there to have that. You know somebody saying, hey, don't forget the user on your shoulder all the time. So this is not an expert thing only, it's an expert plus community thing. That I think all the time. So this is not an expert thing only, it's an expert plus community thing.

Debra Ruh: 19:29

That, I think, is the that's the trick, and that's a good point. It's, and it is tricky. I remember when we were making mistakes at the beginning and that we were. I remember a gentleman worked for me and I'm going to totally forget his first name, but I remember his nickname, which was Mr Jaws, because he was so good on the screen reader. He was so good on the screen reader, he was so good that he could do things that the rest of us never knew that the screen readers could do. And at first those were the testers we were using, but they're so clever that they can get around all kinds of inaccessible things. And then you could say, oh well, if they can do it, no, these people are no. And so then we learned we had to start bringing in people with disabilities that are relatively new using their screen readers or people from all.

Susanna Laurin: 20:13

Yeah, just not interested in technology.

Debra Ruh: 20:16

Right, right, man, they're right. There's a lot Right, yeah, so that's a powerful point.

Susanna Laurin: 20:24

And I also another. One of my kind of really big things are that I'm so tired of people talking about screen readers. I mean that's a cool thing and if you're new to accessibility, it's a really cool thing to discover how blind people surf the web. That's super nice, but everything does not have to do with screen readers.

Debra Ruh: 20:42

I agree.

Susanna Laurin: 20:43

It's just one really tiny part. It's an important part, but there are so many other things that are important as well, and now we are working. We're doing a research project with people who stutter. So who talks about stuttering in the accessibility community? No one.

Debra Ruh: 20:59

I hear a lot of people in India talking about it, but I don't hear it in the US.

Susanna Laurin: 21:04

So I mean there's so many groups of people and so many target audiences and so many user needs that are not forgotten or omitted but just never in focus, because everyone starts talking about alternative text for screen readers and I go, oh, that's not the most important thing, so that's another thing. With organizations and, to your point, with creating Braille that was a funny story. To really put the money in the right place, then you need to also think about the broad picture of user needs and in the Accessibility Act, I mean, it's about customer service, it's about documentation, about instructions. All of that that has to do with all people and we have 25% of the grown-up population in average in the EU who cannot read a newspaper article and respond to control questions afterward 25% because of their native, non-native speakers, dyslexia, cognitive medicine.

Susanna Laurin: 21:55

There are many reasons why people have problems with this, but just written information is not the only way. You need to think multimodal and this is one of the big differences between how we see accessibility in Europe compared to the US. I mean, the legal stuff is one thing, but really what we think about accessibility is much more UX, design, content and technology, of course, but just like 30%, a third of what it is is technology, and that is means that the text-based thing when I see many US-based websites, it's like this is just text, and it's because it needs to be text, because it needs to be read by a screen reader yeah, sure, but why everyone else then I mean 98% of your users are not screen reader users and they need other things than only text.

Debra Ruh: 22:44

Yeah, I know, and it's really disturbing how, you know, some of our business to business groups have not supported our community of getting this right. But I would also say that I'm hopeful about what AI can help us accomplish with some of these things that we've done. You know, make it all about text, a text alternative. Okay, I think AI is maybe going to help us be a little bit more creative and innovative, because we know how to make things accessible to all humans. We just don't do it.

Susanna Laurin: 23:15

That's true. I just hope that there are clever people enough out there to use AI in a good way. Yes, I agree of AI as such, but I'm worried about people using it in a stupid way, because we still see people thinking that chat GPT actually knows things. I mean, grown up people with education still thinks that is the case. So we have a lot of education doing, I think, before we can kind of let a technology based on AI be used by anyone. There needs to be an educational piece around that so you use it for the right thing. But I'm excited about all the new tech tip that comes out right now.

Antonio Santos: 23:53

No, there are some very interesting ideas being explored when you have the AI on the device itself, not in the cloud, and that permits very interesting experiments. It allows interesting personalization for the user, something that was not possible before.

Susanna Laurin: 24:13

And with much less implications for privacy and all of that. So you know, I think the biggest potential is really in kind of individual assistive technology, if you like, or solutions. I think that's where it's going to really make a difference for people, and cognitive I mean.

Debra Ruh: 24:27

There's a lot of cognitive Good point Right, and I look forward to a time this is what I'm hoping. I know I'm doing Billion Strong where I'm trying to get a billion people to identify whatever. But the reality is I look forward to a time and I think we're going there where you don't really need to tell you I don't need to tell you that I have ADHD and dyslexia. You probably can figure out by how disruptive it can be sometimes but I look forward to a time when people don't have to say I need this to be accessible because I can't see or I can't hear or whatever. And so right now, I just think we're still having a lot of stupid conversations about accessibility and is it even needed? And stuff like that.

Debra Ruh: 25:07

I think what we wanted to achieve today with you, susanna, was we wanted to reintroduce you to our audience, let them know what amazing expertise you and your team have. But also another reason why we're doing it is because we like the collaborative way that you've been doing it. You know the standards and let's train everybody, and I think that's so important right now. We have got to be more collaborative. I've seen accessibility has got so cutthroat as the investor money is poured in and it's like I often think the accessibility industry has just forgotten what they were, why we're doing this in some cases, and so I'm very excited about what you're doing, and I know that Antonio and Neil are too.

Debra Ruh: 25:48

So we're doing this in some cases, and so I'm very excited about what you're doing, and I know that Antonio and Neil are too. So we're very proud to have you on the show, and I'm going to say, first of all, special thanks to Amazon and MyClearText. We are so grateful to you guys. Thank you for supporting these conversations, because our community needs it. So thank you to them. But then I want to turn it over to you, susanna, so that you can first of all tell the audience your URL and we'll make sure all of that's included, but also you know how can they contact you and your final thoughts too.

Susanna Laurin: 26:20

Well, the contact information is easy it's funkafoundationorg. So that is the. I think it's a long word already that. So. So the website may be maybe the best place, but we're also in linkedin and and so on, so you can always reach us. We also have a newsletter in a couple of different languages so you can um follow our work, and we are interested in collaboration with the, with academy, with commercial companies, with industry organizations, civil society.

Susanna Laurin: 26:44

We think, we really think that the you know, the breadth of stakeholders, is what makes life interesting and also what makes our projects more successful.

Susanna Laurin: 26:53

And I just wanted to say that I share your hope that we don't have to speak about accessibility.

Susanna Laurin: 26:57

I've always hoped that I could kind of stop working and be retired, because we have fixed it.

Susanna Laurin: 27:02

I think it would take a time still, and what I would really like to see happening and what we try to focus on but I haven't found the key yet is to make sure that every higher education institution has accessibility in their curricula, because that is what is missing, because before we ever come to the situation where accessibility is there by default and we don't need to talk about it, then we need to educate the next generation of developers, designers and content managers, and as long as we don't do that and in Europe we don't we will just continue remediating things afterwards.

Susanna Laurin: 27:36

That is working backwards and it's very bad. Even if the accessibility community that's kind of how we make business, but that's not the way we should make it. It's not creative and it definitely doesn't scale in a good way. So I hope that we can reach the young generation and get more people, more boots on the ground, get more people involved and making sure that we train everyone who does anything with the digital interfaces and make sure that they know accessibility, so that we can retire and just be happy that we were there when this happened and then now, from now on, everything is accessible.

Debra Ruh: 28:14

Susanna, I'm going to let everybody go. But one more question before we get off. We would really like you to come back on Access Chat in the next couple of months and do a full episode of what's happening with the European directive. If we could talk you into that, we would really appreciate it.

Susanna Laurin: 28:29

The funny thing is that I was one of the persons who said I don't think law is the right way to push this. That many years ago and there are several recordings of me saying that. And now I'm kind of the mother of the first web accessibility directive and now I'm the kind of number one go-to person for the accessibility deck. Of course, happy to do that. It's an important topic and I keep doing that. So absolutely.

Debra Ruh: 28:52

Thank you, thank you so much, and Neil is doing good with his in-laws and Antonio. Thank you. Bye everyone, bye-bye.