The Communication Gap in Tech Accessibility

Accessibility in mobile technology has evolved from seemingly impossible challenges to remarkable innovations. Join us as we welcome back Sabine Lobnig from the Mobile and Wireless Forum to discuss this fascinating journey.

Sabine shares her unique path into accessibility, beginning with linguistics and a fascination with sign language that connected her to the deaf community. This led to her work with the Mobile and Wireless Forum, where she has spent over 13 years championing digital inclusion. The conversation explores how the GARI database—launched in 2008—provides a centralized resource documenting over 200 accessibility features across mobile devices, continually refined through direct consultation with disability communities.

We dive into how mobile technology shattered barriers once considered insurmountable. Remember when experts claimed touchscreens could never be made accessible to blind users? Those "impossible" challenges have been overcome through innovation and collaboration, demonstrating the tremendous progress made in just over a decade.

The European Accessibility Act, coming into force June 28th, represents a watershed moment for digital inclusion. While major manufacturers have largely embraced accessibility, this legislation ensures these practices continue regardless of leadership changes or economic pressures. Perhaps most importantly, it addresses the persistent communication gap—ensuring users not only have accessible devices but know how to use the powerful features already built in.

Discover how the accessibility landscape continues to evolve, from the growing focus on neurodiversity to the challenge of maintaining institutional knowledge as organizations change. Visit gari.info to explore the database and discover features you might not know exist on your own device—you might be surprised what you find!

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to Sabina Labneh
• 0:58 Journey into Accessibility
• 3:56 Diverse Paths to Accessibility Work
• 5:51 Innovation in Mobile Accessibility
• 9:58 Legacy of Accessibility Features
• 15:33 Impact of Accessibility Legislation
• 24:04 Communication and Feature Awareness
• 27:00 Closing and GARI Database Introduction

Transcript

Nweil Milliken: 0:00

Hello and welcome to AXS Chat. I'm delighted that we have a returning guest today. We're delighted to welcome back Sabine Lobnig from Mobile and Wireless Forum. Sabine, you've been doing work in the accessibility space for a long time. You have a database of accessibility features for mobile phones and so on, and you're a regular at some of the accessibility conferences and so on that I have the pleasure of going to as well. Our paths cross relatively frequently, so it's great to have you back. Maybe you could explain better about your work than I just did in a less garbled way, and then we can talk about some of the stuff that you've been doing recently.

Sabine Lobnig: 0:41

Okay, wonderful. Well, thank you, and I looked it up. It's been eight years since the last Access Chat.

Sabine Lobnig: 0:47

You know we all look the same. No problem, I actually had the same tree in the background. That made me laugh this morning when I looked it up. So thank you for the introduction.

Sabine Lobnig: 0:58

So, yes, maybe I'll start with the beginning of how I came to accessibility and that was maybe unusual for the usual crowd via linguistics, the first time I saw sign language, I just knew I had to learn that language. And of course once you start learning sign language you have to get into touch with the community speaking that language. And so the deaf community was my way into accessibility. Because the moment you get in touch with the community, of course you start seeing the problems, understanding the problems and all the barriers they face. So this was the first step. Then the next thing that fascinated me was Braille. So that was the step into, or the doorway into, the blind community. That was the step into, or the doorway into, the blind community.

Sabine Lobnig: 2:00

And then I was really, really lucky to get hired by the Mobile and Wireless Forum 13, 14 years ago, who were actually working on accessibility and who saw my hobbies and thought that was interesting and hired me to do that work. And from there on then I discovered mobile accessibility in the sense of also bringing technology and the problems and the solutions together, and since then I have been really, really happy to work in that space. So first coming from the linguistics, then going to accessibility and technology and then also expanding a little bit further into assistive technology, also working with AAATE, so the Association for Assistive Technology in Europe. And of course then, as Nita also mentioned, we go to the conferences, we mingle with the crowd, we have friends in the crowd, we have colleagues in the crowd and I think once you have the foot in the door you sort of get pulled in. And it's a beautiful experience because you learn. You learn, of course, you detect more problems, but you also learn about new solutions and from there on it develops.

Nweil Milliken: 2:52

One of the things that interests me is that we often talk about accessibility from the view of technologists, but accessibility is also about communication and, like you, there are significant numbers of people coming in from linguistics and speech and language therapy and so on. So I think that that adds a richness to the sort of profession and in fact, one of my team who's also in Austria has come from a linguistics background. So we have a lady called Julia Undoich, which is a great Austrian name because she's not German and she swapped Japanese for JavaScript and so she was interested in languages and was doing Japanese and then got into computing languages and from there started thinking about accessibility. So she's into coding and coding accessibly and so on and so forth. So I think the journeys of how people come into accessibility always fascinate me, and so the starting point of arriving in technology is often quite far removed and tangential. So I'm from a history and English background, antonia's from a sociology background, so we don't start off as technologists but we end up being. So I know Deborah's got a question.

Debra Ruh: 4:08

Well, I was very interested about the point you were saying, neil, just because it is really interesting. The people that come into the industry I was thinking when you were talking about the linguistics. I was thinking about the therapists, the occupational therapists, the PTs, the speech we all have a part to play here that adds so much value, because we are just talking about human inclusion. You know, the question I was going to ask you was obviously I've been in the industry a long time but I found it so interesting when we started talking about mobile and cellular and could we make this fully accessible? And one thing that, as I look back of everything that happened and I'll give a shout out to Excel Lebois of G3ICT because they really were very focused on this topic as well, and I know y'all have been engaged with them, but I'm actually looking back so surprised at how much innovation came specifically from the conversation.

Debra Ruh: 5:08

You know, these efforts with mobile and cellular. I mean, there were so many things that we had said as society that it was impossible to make a touchscreen fully accessible to somebody that was blind. It's impossible. Well, I guess it's not impossible because we did it. So I just remember thinking as I've watched it and everything. I think the mobile conversations have added great, great value to accessibility and I was just wondering if you might want to explore that topic a little bit, or even if y'all agree with me. But it is interesting looking backwards and seeing what we've done, you know.

Sabine Lobnig: 5:56

Yeah, no, I absolutely agree with you. And it's interesting because in the database, in the GARI database, that is our core project. I mean, we started with that in 2008. So just one year after the iPhone, right, when we had all these discussions around the smartphones, when just people had got used to the feature phones and having the few accessibility features there. But even then we already had an issue with the communication because, yes, there were accessibility features and no people didn't know about it. And the manufacturers only realized the problem when they got always the same request for features that were actually already there. And the consumers were coming back and saying we need that. And he said, well, it's there, no one knows about it.

Sabine Lobnig: 6:41

And I was at that point where they decided, yeah, okay, we do need to do a better job, we have an association, so let's get them to do that. And at the time they decided it's a common issue, it's not competitive, we want to do that together. And so they put their resources into one central source of information, which is this online database where you can find an accessible device for you information, which is this online database where you can find an accessible device for you. And if you look at that database. So from the very beginning it was collaborative, right. It wasn't just the manufacturer saying those are the features, but they were clever enough right in the beginning to say, okay, let's talk to the associations of people with disabilities Also, what kind of information do they need? And when you look at the list, there are many features on there that are important for people with disabilities that we wouldn't have classified as accessibility features. You know, in the beginning for the feature phones there was stuff like easy placement of the battery and things like that. That, yeah, hardware feature is not forcibly the first thing that comes to mind for accessibility, right. Or then you know, when mobile internet was taking up and you had the first services that were really crucial for accessibility, well, internet connectivity was one of the features that people with disabilities said that's the first thing that I need to know about the device before I can decide right.

Sabine Lobnig: 8:00

So it was very instructive from the beginning and we kept this habit, this good habit of consulting with the community, and have installed it in a two-year feature review. So every two years we go out to the community and ask them what they need to know or what they want to see in the database and in the devices and when you look at that then you see really interesting developments. You see what kind of features were they asking for 10 years ago? What kind of features are they asking now, in 2024, when we did the last feature review? And that is really interesting.

Sabine Lobnig: 8:35

And you see an up and down. Once it's the blind community that is stronger, has more demands. Very often it's the hearing community. In the last review we had neurodiversity really coming up as an important topic, whilst cognitive before was not so much mentioned, right. So from that perspective, yes, I think we have done an incredible development. I think we need to be always careful not to develop so far that we leave the community behind and maybe become more inaccessible, because right now we're at the point where we have fantastic accessibility, but we need to also keep that and preserve it and take it with us or have it, you know, ideally integrated so much that it's the core that we develop around.

Debra Ruh: 9:19

And I like some of the comments you made about the trends that we're seeing, especially with neurodiversity. But I know that Antonio has a question, so let me bring him in.

Antonio Santos: 9:28

We know that in the past we have more players in the market. The phones were slightly different than they are today, but a lot of knowledge was built from the interactions at that time. So some of the technology that we use today on the phones from Apple or the operating system from Google have some ideas that were developed way before they came into the market in terms of accessibility. So how do you see this history of impact from what was done in the past and influence the development of phones today? Because, in reality, we are building on a legacy and on a story that was built by many, many people. Some of them today are not even players in the market anymore, right?

Sabine Lobnig: 10:15

Yeah, that's true. I mean, the one that will come to mind is like Symbian on Nokia, right? I mean that was the first screen reader built. Was it built in? I think in the later models it was, before you still had to download it extra. So yes, there is a strong legacy that we build on.

Sabine Lobnig: 10:30

How do we see that still today? Through the database? I'm not sure. I mean maybe in the form of the featured list, because today we have listed really over 200 features now for mobile phones, and that is a lot and also sort of can be overwhelming, right, and we thought, okay, let's reduce it. And then you come to the point where, with what justification do you take one of the features off that one of the disability groups had said they wanted to see there in the first place? And when we went through that list we actually saw we cannot take any one of those features really off, even if part of that, from today's perspective, only relates to feature phones.

Sabine Lobnig: 11:12

Or we have legacy there, like SMS messaging. You know, you think it's self-evident. No, for some groups it's not self-evident and you need the feature and you need the explanation for the feature because it's an integral part, right? So, yes, the legacy is there. Is it seeable or understandable for everyone? I don't think so. I mean, I think it's people like you and me and all of us who work decades in the business that bring the legacy with. I don't think that today, a person that is 20 years old and looks for an accessible device will see where the legacy is. They just reap the benefits.

Debra Ruh: 11:50

You know, Sabine, you made me think of a story, a quick story, and I'm going to turn it over to Neil. I remember, and I'm going to call them out because they don't exist. They exist Somebody else gobbled them up but there was a training company called NetG, very, very large global company, and they built their own screen reader. They built their own screener in their tools and when they told me that, I was like why did you do that? We don't want to use your screen reader, and it was just so ridiculous. They were trying to help, but the reality is, you know, they did not have a robust screen reader and, unfortunately, the screen reader that they're requiring you to use to get to these courses would turn off your screen reader. So it was like we were learning a lot during those times. So I just you know, and God bless them for trying to make sure we were included, and they figured it out, but you just reminded me of that. So over to you, neil.

Nweil Milliken: 12:44

Wow, yeah, that reminds me of some of the things that happen with overlays now. Where they interfere, companies implement them with the best of intentions because they think that they're helping Right. Sabine, you, in your answer to Debra before, talked about the need that we've done so much. That sort of organizations that have been real leaders in the space of accessibility do things that look like they haven't been maintaining. What with the launch of I mean windows first, ios 26 and the um aero I mean the transparent glass interface that they've launched, a lot of people have called out for potentially being, you know, pretty inaccessible. Now I think that we have to wait and see.

Nweil Milliken: 13:36

I actually take some heart in the fact that there was really a lot of coverage about the potential inaccessibility of this design decision from mainstream technology press. So if we look back eight years ago to when we last had you on Access Chat, I very much doubt that if one of our major mobile phone manufacturers did something that reduced accessibility, that that would have even been on the radar of the mainstream press. So for that alone I feel that there has been significant movement and progress. But then there was also a post on LinkedIn from Matt May saying before we all go and pile in, are complaining to the people that work in these companies that have maybe made a retrograde step on accessibility.

Nweil Milliken: 14:34

Bear in mind that they're responsible spokespeople for the organization and they may have been spending ages internally advocating for why this is a really bad idea and lost the battle because someone thought something shiny was nice. But they're being professional and they're trying to make the best of it. So don't give them a kicking. And you know, heart goes out to our friends right now in that particular accessibility space. But to have come around the circle, there was a bit of a detour here. But essentially, while we have these people within the accessibility teams, what is it do you think that needs to change so that they have the gravitas and the weight of, say, a security team? Because if you have a regression on security, sure as heck heads are going to roll inside companies.

Sabine Lobnig: 15:33

I think that's the elephant in the room, right, also with the timing of the latest OS update, with the legislation coming into force on 28 June, of course. So the beauty is the beauty and the care to the companies is that the accessibility people now have a really pretty heavy stick in their hand, and that is the market access directive. So in Europe, many, many devices and those are the devices we are talking about, right, so that's the mobile phones, the tablets, the wearables, the smart TVs, basically the laptops as well, so I would almost say all ICT devices, it's every device with advanced computing capability which is very soon probably also my, you know, vacuum cleaner they all need to be accessible, and so that's why I would also be careful with the critique on the US. I haven't tested it yet, but they know that the legislation is there and I would be really surprised if it was truly inaccessible. Right, and it might be a little bit inaccessible to one of a little bit less accessible than it was before to one of the groups might be, but you know, in my experience they're pretty fast to fix that then, because the big companies have understood that accessibility is a business case. So there the discussion is won and I think that's really great. Legislation like the Accessibility Act help tremendously because you know, if you have big fines and you have even some countries where you have product recall and withdrawal, which is a huge, huge issue for a company, and even prison time in a beautiful country that Antonio is sitting in, that is huge right and we never had that before, so that helps move it forward.

Sabine Lobnig: 17:20

Where you have an issue then is smaller companies that don't have that much experience with accessibility yet maybe don't have the budget to have a big accessibility team, and where you really still have competence missing or the profound understanding missing. I know Neil, you and Atos and, of course, debra and Antonio we go to the conferences, we mingle there, we understand because we're batting in the community and understand, then right, and you need understanding because if you just do a certification or you get CHPT to tell you what you need to know about accessibility wonderful. This is like when I give you a text or I read a text in Spanish. I can read it, I don't understand it.

Sabine Lobnig: 18:04

You know you need that understanding, in particular when you develop products and services and nothing will ever be 100%. This is impossible. You cannot make everything absolutely accessible for every person in the world. I'm a left-handed person. The world is not accessible to me, right? I mean, I have lots of barriers. But it is about how do you go there with the primary intention, how do you deal with it when a problem arises, and how do you give people also the possibility to interact with you, you know, to say there's an issue, or that they need help, or that they need training. It's all of those components that we need.

Nweil Milliken: 18:41

So I think you're right. I don't actually think there's really that much legal risk for the big mobile manufacturer in question, because they have accessibility features. You can turn it off. But I think that it's then becomes a sort of a thing around choice and presentation and they led with the idea of being inclusive and now you're having to go back a few steps. So I think that they're definitely not going to be in danger of falling foul of the legislation, because it's a matter of configuration and preferences and it can be configured to be accessible. You could knock out all of the transparency, but the optics are not so good.

Debra Ruh: 19:29

Yeah.

Nweil Milliken: 19:30

And you know, you, you would you know. So that's a it, so it's. There's still some stuff in, in terms of sort of how the organizations view this stuff and how decisions get made, that I think many organizations lack in maturity, and even ones that are really good at it. When you're in a constant state of flux, you know organizations change and so processes don't. You know, if you rely on people and the organization change, then you don't have the processes.

Antonio Santos: 20:03

No, my question goes in the direction of the legislation and we know that we have the European Accessibility Act at the end of the month and I would like to know if this is a development that has impacted, and that impacted in terms of what you see in the industry or changes in the database. Is there something there that you could tell us about?

Sabine Lobnig: 20:26

And so, in terms of the mobile phone manufacturers, let's go with them, because they were also the first ones in the database and I have to say, the European Accessibility Act enshrines what they already were doing. I mean, that was one of the things. When the first text came out was like why are you regulating us? We're doing all of that stuff already, right. So that was a bit of a misunderstanding in the beginning, but there is. You know, there is a benefit of enshrining it making sure they cannot back develop. You know, when times are tough or when the whole management group has changed, no, they cannot decide against it anymore. Now they really need to continue doing it Now. No, they cannot decide against it anymore. Now they really need to continue doing it. They would have done so very likely, as in any case, but nonetheless, where it trickles down, though, now is to companies that are not that huge. That we do see, because the big manufacturers, they have been there already and they had time and the knowledge to prepare accordingly. But then you have smaller manufacturers. You have Positivo, who is only in Latin America, you have Kyocera, who is only in Latin America, you have Kyocera, who is only in Japan, or MobiWire in France and now all of a sudden they need to do that too, you know. And very tricky when you have hardware involved as well, because it's not just that you change the coding or you can update on that front, but they saw it coming for a long time, or you can update on that front, but they saw it coming for a long time, and so you had a really strong trickle-down effect that otherwise you might not have had. And then also the knock-on effect to the other product groups that are affected. You know, I mean again from the big manufacturers. They were moving there already, but now it's really not a question of if you want to move with them, the whole industry has to.

Sabine Lobnig: 22:12

And the other part that I want to say which there I'm not sure if that would have come without the European Accessibility Act is this very strong emphasis on accessible information, on accessibility features, because that was something we talked about eight years ago, right in the last Access Chat, and also something that we mentioned today. We have a problem with the communication. The devices are accessible Fantastic, you have it in your hand. What do you do? How do you start? Where do I find it? How do I switch it on, how do I switch it off, all of those things. You know that until recently that was the whole raison d'etre for the database. That was that we need a place where people can go, where they can find an accessible device. And then they did let us know. Well, now I have it, now tell me how to use it.

Sabine Lobnig: 22:57

So we started putting on feature mediums, you know, just to show you in the device. You go there. This is the setting, this is where you find it, this is how you switch it on, this is how you fine tune it, this is how you fine tune it and, unfortunately, for a screen reader, this is how you switch it off. So I think the strongest impact, at least from our perspective from the companies that were already doing a lot, is this part of information that it will be very clear, or at least there is the obligation that you communicate to the consumer very offensive sorry, not offensively, but very upfront and very proactively about the accessibility feature. So it won't be just the marketing information you know the shiny new thing with that much pixel camera, it will be. Those are the accessibility features that you have If you have a hearing or vision impairment or if you just want to better see or better hear with your device. This is what helps you, and I think that would be a crucial difference.

Nweil Milliken: 23:54

Thank you. Yeah, I think that that knowledge of features is really lacking. But also one of the things that we've been working on is understanding who's using features. Not on mobile devices so much, but we do an awful lot of stuff in the workplace. Yeah, devices so much, but, um, we do an awful lot of stuff in the workplace, yeah. So we're, we're supporting, you know, people's computers and the the sort of the applications and so on that they're using in their day-to-day work, and there are a lot of accessibility features built into windows and teams and the g suite and all of these kind of things. But again, people aren't aware of them, but also management aren't aware about how many people have them turned on either. So what we've been doing is we've built this thing.

Nweil Milliken: 24:36

It's anonymized because, we're not trying to identify individuals with disabilities it's not about that but it's about being able to understand what the usage is and also then make people aware. So if you run a communications campaign about features, you can see whether or not people are going to start to use them and you can sort of look at things like well, oh well, you've got 500 people in your organization using in design and creating websites and so on, but you've only got four copies of JAWS and you've only got 10 people with the accessibility checker turned on and you've only got so many copies of. You know, you've only got Accessibility Insights plugin in 23 browsers, so maybe you've got a systemic accessibility problem within your organization. So we're trying to look at these ways of raising awareness and understanding where we need to communicate, because I think the thing is we spend all of our time communicating, but we need to think about how we can do that effectively.

Sabine Lobnig: 25:45

Yes, yes, I very much agree. And then you know, I mean, then it's beautiful. You know, if people use the accessibility features as an add-on or as a productivity gain, fantastic. But you know, nonetheless it spreads the knowledge in that way that when people get older, or when something happens, or when you have the colleague coming in that does have a disability, then the knowledge is there. You know, even if in the start it might be in the company context and a productivity hack, fine, no matter what. We need to get the information out so that then the people who really, really need it that they have it at their disposal.

Nweil Milliken: 26:23

Yes, fantastic, we've reached the end of our half hour already.

Sabine Lobnig: 26:27

It seems to have gone vanishingly quickly.

Nweil Milliken: 26:30

I need to thank Amazon and MyClearTek for supporting us, keeping us on air and keeping us accessible. So thank you so much for joining us again, and we really look forward to continuing the discussions on social media.

Antonio Santos: 26:44

I mean, the Q&A is part of the richness of all of this, but before we're letting Sabine go, we would like her to share with us how people find about the database and how they can take advantage of it.

Nweil Milliken: 26:56

How can you use Gary?

Sabine Lobnig: 26:57

Excellent point. Where do we get it? It's very easy. You just go to your browser and you type in garyinfo. That's J-A-R-I.

Nweil Milliken: 27:06

G.

Sabine Lobnig: 27:07

G sorry, yes, Please English speakers, help me out, Neil. Why don't you spell it? You know that better than I do.

Nweil Milliken: 27:15

Yes, so it says g-a-r-i dot info.

Sabine Lobnig: 27:19

In this instance it helps to be a native speaker, and then you're already on the homepage and the homepage will ask you what you're looking for, and from there it's then pretty straightforward. It's also available in 20 languages, so some Asian languages and some Western languages. Yeah, there is also contact details on the page. If you want to get in touch, please let us know. And then just go there and have fun and also look up your own device. You might be surprised what you discover about your own device.

Nweil Milliken: 27:46

Excellent. Thank you so much. Great speaking to you again.

Sabine Lobnig: 27:49

I'm looking forward to the questions then.