Voices - Widzialni
BAF was founded on the belief that business needs a shared space to talk about accessibility. How has the EAA changed this discourse?
The European Accessibility Act has fundamentally changed both the language and the weight of the conversation about accessibility in business. We now talk less about good practices or social responsibility. Regulatory compliance in the design of products, services and processes has now become the central concern. Thanks to the EAA, accessibility is increasingly becoming part of business strategy and risk management. Companies have stopped asking whether investing in accessibility is profitable. There are no longer questions about the number of people with disabilities in order to calculate the ROI. The time has come for the systematic implementation of the requirements set by the EAA.
BAF has become a place where business can discuss legal requirements, interpretative uncertainties, costs, technological implications and the long-term effects of the EAA.
Trialogue brings together business, regulators and NGOs. Which of these groups is currently the readiest for the EAA?
The readiness differs across these groups. Companies are motivated, although to a varying degree, by deadlines and the risk of sanctions. The gap between businesses with and without accessibility awareness is still quite considerable.
However, thus far NGOs and, of course, specialist communities have been best equipped with expert knowledge. They are the ones with the strongest motivation for change and for improving accessibility.
Finally, regulators may be formal accessibility overseers but they operate under conditions of interpretative uncertainty regarding the standards. Despite clear willingness to engage in dialogue, supervisory authorities are still devoid of tools and experience that would allow them to effectively enforce the EAA.
The EAA has entered into force but the world is racing toward AI agents. Are European accessibility regulations keeping up with this change or are we already looking in the rear-view mirror?
European accessibility regulations are solid, but they were designed mainly with classic interfaces and predictable user-system interactions in mind. The world of AI agents fundamentally changes their logic. No longer does accessibility merely concerns website readability and WCAG-compliance (although this remains a binding requirement). It is also about system understandability, foreseeability and user-controllablity. Therefore, we should reorient our thinking about accessibility toward autonomous systems as quickly as possible.
AI can be an adaptive layer for accessibility or a new form of exclusion. What determines which direction we take?
On its surface, accessibility is already strongly supported by AI, from automatic alt text for images, through better link descriptions, to generating content in plain language. Moreover, at deeper levels, related to system programming and user interactions, AI can become a powerful tool for digital barrier compensation, provided that accessibility is embedded into its design from the very beginning.
If, however, AI is developed solely in terms of efficiency and cost reduction, without control mechanisms and the possibility of user intervention, it will become a new obstacle which might be difficult to identify. Today, in the era of AI, it is the relationship between humans and the system where accessibility becomes significant, in addition to interfaces.
Move 37 manifesto states: “Artificial intelligence must serve humans”. How can this slogan translate into the practical implementation of the EAA in companies?
hen interacting with AI, user must remain the subject rather than a mere data source. AI-based systems should be designed to be understandable and accessible to people with diverse cognitive, sensory and communication needs. Simultaneously, completing a WCAG checklist ought not to be seen as the finishing line of EAA implementation. The process must take into account user scenarios within the system, including those in which AI makes decisions or recommendations on users’ behalf.
If you could add one paragraph to the EAA to prepare the regulation for the era of AI agents, what would it include?
I would add a regulation stating that any system using autonomous, AI-based decision-making mechanisms, must be designed to be cognitively and communicatively accessible, ensuring that users understand how the system operates at a level tailored to their abilities.
Interview by Karolina Mendecka
Business Accessibility Forum Director