Building Tech People Actually Want

Doors that don’t open themselves often open our eyes. That’s where Laura Wissiak journey began—watching visitors struggle with heavy museum doors in Vienna and realizing that access is the start of every user experience, not an afterthought. From there she taught herself UX, learned to code just enough to ship fixes, and found a voice by blogging through imposter syndrome. Along the way, she discovered that the accessibility community is bigger—and kinder—than it first appears, especially when we treat corrections as collaboration.

We dive into the hard parts most teams avoid: why “replace the white cane” is the wrong goal, how social signaling matters for safety and dignity, and what happens when you build with blind users from day one. Laura walks us through Hope Tech’s Sixth Sense, a sleek neck‑worn wearable that detects obstacles from head to knee and slightly beyond shoulder width—where low signs, open doors, and jutting branches lurk. With private haptic feedback, optional audio, and profiles tuned for crowded transit or open streets, Sixth Sense augments the cane’s ground‑level strengths instead of competing with them. Style is part of accessibility too, so the device looks like premium headphones rather than medical gear, reducing stigma and blending into daily life.

Beyond hardware, we talk about wayfinding, mental load, and why route planning for multi‑modal trips needs to be less exhausting. Laura shares candid lessons from co‑creation: users may cheer your intent while quietly rejecting your product, and that polite gap can sink a startup. The remedy is rigorous validation, lived experience inside the team, and a willingness to rebuild when the feedback you need contradicts the feedback you want. If you care about inclusive design, assistive technology, UX research, or accessible navigation, this conversation offers grounded insights you can apply today.

Enjoy the episode? Follow, share with a colleague, and leave a quick review—then tell us: what’s one feature you’d prioritize for smarter, more human mobility tech?

Chapters

• 0:00 Laura’s Path Into Accessibility
• 2:50 Customer Service Lessons on Access
• 5:55 Self‑Teaching, Pushback, and Blogging
• 9:06 Finding the Community and Overcoming Fear
• 13:45 Education Gaps and Bridging Bubbles
• 19:20 Welcoming New Voices and Nuance
• 23:10 Introducing Hope Tech and Mission
• 26:20 Why Augment, Not Replace, the White Cane

Transcript

Neil Milliken: 0:00

Hello and welcome to AXSChat. I'm really, really very happy that we can welcome Laura Wissiak to AXSChat. I've met Laura a few times now at various different conferences. Had the pleasure of sitting in the Austrian Parliament with her at Zero Project this last year. But Laura is is one of the next generation in in accessibility. And so we definitely want to highlight as her named in the Forbes 30 under 30, I believe. Congratulations. And working for Hope Tech. And if you want to find their website, it's Hope Tech.vision. So don't go to the wrong places. So Laura, welcome. It's great to have you with us. Please tell us a little bit about your journey into accessibility and the work that you're doing.

Laura Wissiak: 0:50

Yes, so. Thank you for having me. Um I'm not right quite sure where to start with my journey in accessibility because I always thought it started when I started my self-taught UX design journey, where I was told in the boot camp that accessibility is the foundation of usability. And I thought to myself, okay, checks out. If you can't access it, then how can you use it? And how can you even talk about good accessibility then? But when when I've been thinking about it, even before that, I had some encounters because I used to work at a local museum here in Vienna. Like every customer service job or any job you have, um, you work with people, you just meet a lot of people, and of course also customers with disabilities. And that was, I would say, the first time where I thought, like, hey, if there is someone in a wheelchair coming in, and yes, they can take the elevator. But we had those uh those those doors where you have to actually they were pretty old, so you would have to um open both doors in order for a wheelchair to fit through. So I thought like, hey, maybe I should walk up there and uh open that door before they get there, because how would they even enter the exhibition otherwise? So looking back, I think working in customer service, what made me actually aware of how important accessibility is. Not only in like yeah, day-to-day settings, but also leisure settings. Because it's one of the burst rings if you have to turn people away because they physically can't access a space if they're on vacation and they just want to experience it and have fun. So I think that was what motivated me to actually pursue it a bit more deeper. Combined with the fact that when I entered uh the IT space and web design, I learned soon that some people don't take it as seriously. Well, I was learning, okay, accessibility is the bare minimum and you need it in order to work on accessibility and build that on top. Other people were like, yeah, sounds good, uh, but we don't have the time for that. Let's let's fix that later. Or someone even told me, like, yeah, you do it. And that was also how I started or had to learn also a bit of coding on the side, because suddenly I was sitting there, like, okay, I don't know what this ARIA label falls, or but I don't know what they do here. So I need to figure that out myself so I can tell my senior developers what they're supposed to do and what they're not doing right now.

Neil Milliken: 3:13

It's great to understand the the initial motivation and uh the sort of the light bulb moment, the epiphany when you sort of realize actually, you know, this this thing's important, we need to can consider people and so on. So you were doing the the the web design the UX design and starting to learn code and so on. How did that then get you involved in, you know, did you then start getting involved in the community of accessibility? Because like you, you know, we've been in in the industry for some time, and we know about the pushback, and we know that some people think, oh well, minimum viable product and everything else. So how did you sort of go from the switch of being interested and implementing it in your own work to engaging with the community and trying to encourage others?

Laura Wissiak: 3:58

I think it started when I kind of had to do it, just in order to I mean, I had to learn it myself in order to explain it to other people. And when I realized that many people are actually not aware about accessibility or don't know where to start, that's what prompted me to also start uh blogging, post my first blog posts, and from there on I received a lot of positive thoughtback from the accessibility community, maybe also in part because some of you noticed, like, hey, there's someone new there. And by now I know like the space is pretty tight-knit, so people tend to know each other after a few years. You kind of know everyone who's there. You've been to Zero Project conference once and you kind of know who's around. But that really motivates me to engage more with the community and also share more of my knowledge. Because at first it was a mixture of, oh no, I'm new here, and also a lot of imposter syndrome, which I've learned that just doesn't go away, that just stays, but you have to deal with it. And I was also questioning, do I actually know enough to share? But the more I've written, uh, the more I've talked to people, it turns out yes, there is always something that's interesting to people. And also if you don't share it, you're not gonna get corrected on it. Which is something I think many people have to learn. It's not actually the end of the world if you post something wrong, as long as you can correct yourself and don't, well, get in the way of yourself, but actually have the balls to stand up to it and say, like, oh yeah, that was wrong. Here's the right way to do it, or here's the correct answer to it.

Antonio Santos: 5:33

You mentioned that you have to learn a lot by yourself. I have uh we I organized a a few hackathons on this topic, and I had a few people who end up joining the hackathons coming out from the university, from UX design, from developing. I haven't learned anything about this. I want to learn more. What do you think is is important to do to make sure that, well, people don't have to learn by themselves, but actually learn that as part of their regular studies on design, on developing. What needs to be done there?

Laura Wissiak: 6:06

I think it would be really cool if we well, if we had it as part of a fixed curriculum. So far as I know, in Austria there's only one university who offers a bit of web accessibility education as part of the computer science curriculum. But we're talking like we're talking about hours, not like separate courses or um a a separate um 30 credit activity. There is really just a few hours you get within your whole bachelor's degree, which is no way enough to cover anything. So I think the bare minimum that would help people to start is actually pinpointing into the direction, okay, these are the communities you can get to, like these are the resources. Because that's also my motivation why I started uh my blog and my newsletter at the time, because I wanted to centralize new uh centralize those those accessibility education events. And I started kind of just in the LinkedIn DMs, like sending them to all the people where I thought, like, oh, this might be something for you, and this might be something for uh your niche. And some point followed, click it might be more strategic to do that as one newsletter, so everyone who is interested can look at them. And again, the more I started digging, the more I found out, yeah, we have a lot of those initiatives. They're just buried somewhere and somehow they don't leave their own accessibility bubble. So one of my goals is to actually further the communication between the bubbles because I found it so fascinating when I was in UX design particularly, I already was specializing in web accessibility. I was actively looking for resources on this and events and networking. But once I started with a sort of tech development, I learned that this this whole new space that I've never heard of, never gotten in touch with, and I was really shocked like how is this possible? There were a lot of people who do really, really cool things in Vienna, in my hometown, and I never got into contact with them. I'd never even saw them online or anything. Just kind of sad if you think about it.

Debra Ruh: 8:09

Well, I I would say, you know, I think there's just a whole lot more of us than people realize, because there's a lot of us, there's a lot of people that cannot attend these conferences, they cannot afford to attend the conferences. So the reality is I I think our community is a lot bigger than we realize. I also wanted to uh comment, Laura, on something you were saying that um you were saying, you know, you would put information out online and then you did not say the word people would attack you and tell you were wrong. That's my wording. But at the same time, I think that's something that people do not understand about accessibility is that to say that you're wrong is just such an interesting bold word because accessibility is fluid. It's human inclusion. Technology is always shifting and changing. And even though we think we know everything about accessibility, we do not. And so I think we always need to be continuing to learn and support each other and certainly support the younger voices coming into the field. I remember a long time ago, our friend that we've had on multiple times, Dr. Greg Vanderheyden, had said years ago, probably before you were born, Laura, that, you know, one thing that we were doing at the time was we were very bad about welcoming new people into the accessibility field. He said that we were like eating our babies. So I remember hearing him say that and being like, gosh, he's so true. It's so true. We've gotten much better about that now. The accessibility field, I think, is very welcoming all over the world. We also have gotten better about not making it about just one part of the world or two parts of the world, say Western parts of the world, and really taking a look at what does this really mean for everyone? Because the reality is, regardless of how much work that's been done with accessibility, technology is still not accessible. Websites are still not accessible, apps are still not accessible, software is still not accessible to humans. And so I just think it's interesting people that want to call others out online and say, you're wrong, when the reality is we're all learning this together. And I'm looking forward to us caring about human inclusion when we're dealing with technology and AI. So I applaud your efforts and you're really trying to, like you said, make sure the bubbles touch each other because this is still a very complicated topic that we're talking about here. So I appreciate you, Laura.

Neil Milliken: 10:28

Can I come in on that? I mean, I I think that what I was impressed about was you saying that you're not afraid and you've learned not to be afraid of people correcting you, right? And I think that many people are. And although, as Deborah says, the community has got a lot better at doing it in a uh non-aggressive way. And so we're no longer eating our young, we're just sort of gently berating them. I do think that a lot of people who have what you described as imposter syndrome are very reticent to engage with the community in case that they make a mistake. And I think that because people take accessibility seriously and because they want to do the right thing, they're nervous about maybe getting something wrong. So I I I definitely applaud you for putting stuff out there and then openly taking the correction because that's how we learn. And I think that we need to try and encourage other people to step forward as well, and take it when we do ask and try and correct people or give people alternatives, because sometimes it's it's not one, you know, there are shades of grey in accessibility for sure, as Deborah said, you know, because we've got different needs to be met. But there are also different ways that you can apply code, different techniques, and some of which are preferred and some of which aren't, and of course, techniques develop over time. So I think as we um you know engage in these conversations, especially if we're sort of technical and we're the subject matter experts on some of these things, we need to engage with people gracefully so that we can bring them into the fold rather than keep them uh you know discouraging them from participating in the community. So so good on you for that. Tell us a bit more about Hope Tech.

Laura Wissiak: 12:14

Pleasure. So Hope Tech started about ten years ago now, almost 10 years I think, in Kenya, founded by Brian Moendup, and then expanded to first the UK, then also Austria, where I kind of joined. Uh, that was roughly two year a bit more than two years ago in a while. And we have been developing since then assistive tech, more on the high-tech side, I would say, and focusing pretty much on visual disabilities, which was like a very steep current learning current for me. Learning learning curve. There's the word. At the beginning, but also like again, it's it's really cool. That was my main motivation when I heard, like, hey, there's this possibility to join Hope Tech. I felt like honestly, that sounds exactly what I want to do because I'm super interested in anything that's web accessibility. And building something that contributes to access, but also you get to learn directly from the people is just that was the best thing I could imagine, and definitely don't regret it now. So we're almost uh ready to roll out the sixth sense now, which is uh a type of mobility aid or navigation aid. And I do want to be a bit self-critical here because one of the first weeks I've been with Hope Tech, and we were still pursuing the idea of replacing the white cane, which I think many startups are still doing, until we talk to exactly two users, and then we learned like ha, nobody actually wants that. So nobody who uses a white cane wants to let go of that because it's just so reliable, it gives you so much information and also it's there's also a big journey between actually if you're if you have been blind your whole uh life, it's probably different. But many people go blind later in life, and for them it's a big um step to actually go and get some tools to help them or in. So once you've adopted to the white cane, you're probably not gonna get it go anymore. So that's why we've kind of pivoted to from replacing the white cane to augmenting it and looking less at okay, how can we place this in more towards what are still some of the weak spots of the white cane, like where can we add on to that and improve in that instead of replacing?

Neil Milliken: 14:21

So the Sixth Sense is a wearable device. Can you tell us a little bit more about what it is and and how it augments the white cane?

Laura Wissiak: 14:31

Yes. Uh so it's always a bit tricky to describe in like just in words. I wish I had someone here to show it. But it's basically a neck wearable, so you wear it around your neck, and it is designed to visually remind you of like high-end headphones. So they just rest on your chemicals. Which has the advantage of the device always knowing like which direction you're facing, because it's facing the same direction as your torso. We've also tried out a few variants of head worn versus uh torso worn. Again, like we've basically shapeshifted at least seven times by now. One of the ideations was also glasses, until we found out, hey, nobody like not all people wear glasses, and if you wear glasses, they're probably very you're very particular about the type of glasses, and then you also have to factor in styling. Because that is something I still see kind of underrepresented in assistive tech. Many people forget that assistive tech should still look cool. It looks, it tends to look very medical and very clunky, but people do still want to look at least stylish, maybe not like super fashionable or super explorative with their style, but everyone wants to look decent. And that is the number one feedback that I've gotten in like all the conversations that people want to look put together. This is also why we've made it more headphone-esque, so that it's sleek, it's not as intrusive. You compare it with almost any outfits, and it just looks maybe a bit more sporty, or like you're into a bit of um, I don't know, new and emerging tech. But it in general doesn't give off a medical vibe or a like clunky cyborg vibe. It's just supposed to be there and um give you the support that you want without other people noticing it. We've also adopted mostly haptic feedback from it. You can also switch it to audio output, but haptic feedback to also include uh deafblindness and cater towards that. But again, also to keep it less detectable so that if someone is standing next to you, they won't really hear any directions you're getting or any audio cues because it's all just haptic feedback.

Neil Milliken: 16:39

And so and I I love the fact that you've you've understood that we don't want our tech to look like it's made by Fisher Price, the children's toy manufacturer. Right? Uh that you know our glasses are an extension of our personalities. You know, they reflect our tastes and our moods. Um and some of us have multiple pairs that match their clothes. So I think that the fact that you've gone through these different iterations is is a is a really good sign because you're prepared to engage with the community and learn. And one of the things that frankly I I see a lot of as someone that sort of is engaged in startup things and technology forums like the one that Xero runs and others, is that people have said, I have solved this problem for the community that I've not talked to. And and clearly you you're talking to the community and you're engaging in the community and you're finding how you can make a product that's actually useful to the community and is at the same time not waving its hands about saying, hey, I'm an assistive device. So I think that I think that that's really cool. So so what are the what are the things that it it's doing? Is it you're saying it's augmenting the cane and it's giving directions in haptic feedback? Is it sensing stuff around you? Is it object sensing and um because obviously a cane can only sense to a certain length. So so what are the so what are the features of of the of the device that's that augment the the white cane.

Laura Wissiak: 18:24

Sorry, I totally totally forgot that part. As you said, like the white cane is mainly reaching on the floor. Some people also have like it depends on how tall you are, how fast a walker you are, how far in advance you will get the information. But we have uh kind of decided to go with um scanning from a bit over your head height to around knee height. On the one hand, because the floor is already covered by the white cane, that is just m way more reliable than any sensor could be. You already know is it even, um maybe even from audio feedback what type of flooring it is. That's pretty safe there. But anything that is above knee height to head height is yes, knee height that can still be detected after a while, but it's kind of a gamble depending on how fast you walk, if you might already run into it before that. And head height, there is um no good way to detect that unless you're wearing a cap, for example. And then for it's also like for width, it's also um a bit more than shoulder width, so it goes out. You can imagine like a comb going out. One thing we've also gotten as feedback is that people would like different distance settings because again, for example, in Vienna you have very open spaces, but you also have very crowded public transportation. And if you were to enter that and scan anything that's like within a meter of you, you would get non-stop busing. So we've set it to a very close radius, excluding about 20 centimeters from a chest away, because that's where most people will keep their hands while talking or also hold their white kin while they're standing. So you have like a 20 centimeter exclusion zone, then about half a meter of very, very narrow uh obstacles, and then up to one meter and three meters, which is for more either outdoor settings or very fast walkers. And we've also set it up to be very, very customizable because there are just so many types of visual impairments. Like you can't cover anything with one setting. So you can always customize it, like I only need on one side or I only need the other. You can also pause, for example, one side if you have a companion walking with you, and like you know that they're because you're talking to them. Then you can snooze that side and just focus on anything that's on the other side. Similar to how some people, even if they have a sighted guide with them, still like to hold their cane on the other hand because you never know how experienced and how skilled of a sighted guide someone is. I think from a few times I've tried it, I I can't really say that um I'm that reliable. I understand that. Yeah, so it's mostly obstacle deception. We are also still publishing the navigation app, which is similar to how Google Maps uh routes you, only with a few tweaks from smaller cosmetic changes that we've gotten through the community. Like for example, if you have your specific high contrast modes that this also can translate to the app, or just that it's basically also customized to your own needs and stays like that reliably.

Debra Ruh: 21:41

Laura, I also wanted to bring up, I know we all know this, but just for the audience reminding it, that white cane also tells society what's happening. So it's really important that we don't right now we need those white canes because white canes inform society. Somebody wearing a headphones around their neck, that could be anything, right? So I think that's also the reason why the community really want to keep those white canes. It informs us. I was looking at your website, I really like your website. I like that you are looking at this perspective, not just for supporting people with disabilities, but you're looking at it about how it would support women and some of the issues women have to do. So I'd compliment the efforts that you made on your website. I don't see you using wayfinding anywhere on the website. So I was just curious because I know I have seen a lot of efforts, IBM's doing some really cool things. This problem that you're trying to solve, I don't think one company is going to solve all of it. I think that that we're gonna have to have multiple groups as we do solving this. But I was just curious why y'all aren't using the the wayfinding. I was just really obviously just totally curious.

Laura Wissiak: 22:48

Yeah, so I think wayfinding in particular wasn't so much part of the plan at first. And again, it's still a bit of a work in progress. But we've just noticed that there's a lot of mental load involved if you actually have to plan out your whole route. And I also, I like another personal use. In Vienna, Google Maps isn't always the most reliable one, so you can't plan your whole trip with that. You might need different apps and combine them in order to get reliable information. Keyboard here is also real-time information so that you know, for example, is the next uh tramway coming? Is it like even floored or does it have stairs? Like is it a newer one? But we've kind of come to the conclusion, hey, it's pretty like it's pretty complex to plan your whole route, getting from A to B, may with multiple means of transport. And because of that, we kind of want to condense that into like route planning that takes away a bit of the mental load and just helps you like relax. I know it's people are still gonna probably memorize the whole road route ahead, which I probably will do the same. But if you can just uh reduce it a bit, I think that would uh be uh more encouraging for more people to like explore maybe a bit, get out and just like just take a bit of the burden off, just make it make life slightly easier. Right. Probably not all but slightly.

Antonio Santos: 24:12

I would like to to touch a topic that probably could be relevant for anyone trying to develop solutions in this space. So Laura, can you can you walk us through some learning experiences that you got from engaging with this the community during the product development and even mentioning something that has surprised you during the process?

Laura Wissiak: 24:35

One one thing I learned, probably learned before, but realized quite recently was that sometimes people will give you positive feedback just because they like what you're doing, but they don't like the product that you're making. That is the context where I realized it was a conversation on like user-tested versus co-created or how you involve basically how you involve the community and why it's important to also have people with disabilities or with specifically the disability that you're solving for on your team. Because if you just go to external users, some of them will just give you positive feedback because they want to encourage you to keep going, because eventually you will find something better, find a better solution, and they don't want to demotivate you, which is very nice, but also not what you need. And I think in our product development journey, um we had multiple user sessions where we just afterwards sat there as a team, we're like, huh. So now we have to start from scratch, basically. But every time we did that, it ended up getting slightly better. It was demotivating at first, but it also eventually eventually helped a lot. And if you have people on your team who already know what the community thinks like, like what who have a bit of a feel for the community, I would say, they will point that out to you and they will give you the harsh feedback that you know need, not the ones that you want, but the ones that you need, and also point you towards directions like how to approach it or maybe who to talk to in order to remedy that. Because I see a lot of like still I see a lot of startups who have good intentions, but may not have the right yeah, have have user feedback, but maybe not the right harsh user feedback that would help them grow. Which is again nice like it's a nice intention, but it's not really helpful if the effect uh would be that people just wouldn't use the product in the end.

Neil Milliken: 26:25

I think that that quite often happens. People don't want to hurt the feelings of people that have done something with the best of intentions, but they'll never buy the product.

Laura Wissiak: 26:33

Yeah.

Neil Milliken: 26:34

And it's far better to tell people what you think about it, because actually, if you really like the person, you don't want them remorging mortgaging their house to build a product that no one's gonna buy. Because that happens. That happens in our industry because people really c care passionately, they believe that they've they've got a solution for something and they invest everything. And actually the the market for assistive tech is is challenging, right? There's not many devices make a ton of money because you know, okay, we have these huge numbers for disability, but the reality is that when you start segmenting it to particular needs, then it it you know it the numbers quickly dwindle. And so I think that you know, without that sort of market research and without that honesty and realism and that realistic feedback, whilst it might have been people trying to be nice about it, they're actually doing a real disservice to to the the people that have been inventing the product. So so I think it it's really good again that that there is that yeah, that you are getting that feedback and that you've learned to go and seek for the the rougher comments. We we've already reached the end of our half hour. I don't know how that happened quite so quickly, but it always catches me by surprise. So thank you, Laura. It's been a real pleasure. I do need to spell out the URL. It's hope tech. Both words come together. So H O P T E C H dot Vision. And then you can find out about the product and about the organization. Thank you once again. We'll no doubt bump into each other again shortly. I need to thank Amazon and my clear text for supporting us, keeping us on air. See you all next time.

Laura Wissiak: 28:22

Thank you so much.