Practice-based approaches to meeting accessibility requirements

Introduction

The European Accessibility Act (EAA), also known as Directive (EU) 2019/882 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 April 2019 on accessibility requirements for products and services (European Parliament, Council of the European Union, 2019), sets accessibility requirements for a wide range of products and services and addresses not only public bodies but also private companies. On July 22, 2021, the associated law implementing the directive was published in Germany as the Barrier-Free Act (BarrierefreiheitsstÀrkungsgesetz, BFSG). Its requirements apply from 28.06.2025 for products placed on the market from this date and for services provided from this date.
There have been different approaches to accessible design of information and communication technologies for quite some time, e.g. Universal Design (UD), Design for All (DfA), or Ability-based Design (ABD), to name a few (Erlandson, 2007; Fuglerud, 2014; Persson et al., 2015). Despite the various approaches and the insight that accessibility must be considered in all phases of a product development (Ordoñez, Hilera and Cueva, 2022) and that accessibility is clearly gaining relevance against the background of digitalization and demographic change (Bundesministerium fĂŒr Arbeit und Soziales, 2021), too many non-accessible software solutions still exist in practice (Bi et al., 2022). In addition, there is a lack of practical approaches for implementing the principles of accessibility on a broad scale and as a standard in the everyday practice of technology development and consulting.
The reasons for non-accessible developments range from a lack of technical know-how to a lack of resources, arguments about overly complex standards and guidelines, and a lack of awareness and motivation for the topic (Silva et al., 2019; Bi et al., 2022). To further strengthen the accessibility of IT artifacts, more than a purely technical-methodological approach is needed. Rather, care must also be taken to bring design and development teams, companies as a whole, and users* along on the journey to develop practical solutions in a comprehensive manner. In particular, it is important to consider the individual needs and social contexts of the stakeholder groups involved, as well as the impact and interactions on the socio-technical fabric (MĂŒller, 2018; Ogonowski et al., 2018).
Against the backdrop of the regulations of the BFSG coming into force in 2025 (and thus the implementation of the EAA), major challenges arise for research as well as for a large number of companies in addressing the requirements for accessibility. With this workshop at the “Humans and Computers” Conference 2023, we would like to raise awareness of this topic and jointly collect, develop, present, discuss and evaluate practical approaches, perspectives, opinions and solutions, thus making a valuable contribution to meeting accessibility requirements.

Aim of the workshop

In our workshop we would like to discuss with you how we can support all involved stakeholders in the development of accessible IT solutions by applying HCI methods. This includes not only the end users who will ultimately be able to operate the product, but also all stakeholder groups involved up to that point, such as companies and decision-makers, designers, developers, quality assurance, and others. We can already assume that a rethinking of the prioritization of accessibility will have to take place in a fairly short period of time in order to meet the requirements of the BFSG. Furthermore, what are the next “Big Challenges” for the stakeholder groups as well as for HCI researchers to be able to deal well with the expected requirements?
The aim of the workshop is to gather and discuss different perspectives and opinions as well as different approaches in an interdisciplinary combination of researchers*, practitioners* and directly and indirectly affected groups of people. For this purpose, we cordially invite you to apply with a contribution for our workshop (details see below: Call for Papers).
The jointly developed results are to be published at national and international conferences and thus made available to a larger group for application and discussion.

Call for Papers

We would like to ask interested participants* to submit a short position paper (max. 4 pages excl. references) with their ideas on this set of topics via the conference ConfTool (see below for additional instructions) by 10.07.2023 and, if successfully accepted, to present it on site during the workshop. In addition, there is the possibility to publish the contributions (further info after acceptance of the contribution).

Submission until: 10.07.2023

Notification: 13.07.2023

About ConfTool:

https://www.conftool.com/muc2023/index.php?page=newPaper&form_contributiontypeID=168&newpaper=true

Format template:

Please use the ACM SIGCHI 2-column format.

  • Overleaf & LaTeX, and use \documentclass[manuscript,review]{acmart}
  • Word (as a two column document).

Length: max. 4 pages excl. references, for planned publication 4 pages excl. bibliography and short biographies.

Language: English preferred. Papers resulting from the workshop will be published in English.

Additional notes for ConfTool

If direct link above does not work, log in to ConfTool and select “MCI-WS07: European Accessibility Act – Practice-based approaches to meeting accessibility requirements” in the “Submissions” section.

Link to ConfTool: https://www.conftool.com/muc2023

Direct link ConfTool “Submissions” section:

https://www.conftool.com/muc2023/index.php?page=submissions

Direct link ConfTool area workshop:

https://www.conftool.com/muc2023/index.php?page=newPaper&form_contributiontypeID=168&newpaper=true

If you have any questions regarding the submission, please contact Mr. Bittenbinder (sven.bittenbinder@uni-siegen.de).

Topics

Areas that could be addressed with a position paper (non-exclusive list):

  • Empowerment of companies, employees and people with disabilities.
  • Raising awareness and motivation for the topic of accessibility
  • Accessibility strategy as part of the digitization strategy
  • Addressing usability and accessibility on an equal footing
  • Test catalogs, guidelines, own evaluation criteria
  • Implementation of processes and methods in practice
  • Know-how transfer, teaching and learning formats
  • Inclusive management
  • Socio-informatic perspective, view on micro, meso and macro level
  • Sustainability / sustainable processes, methods, models and their appropriation
  • AI-supported tools
  • Challenges for HCI researchers in the field of accessibility

Literature

  • Bi, T. et al. (2022) ‘Accessibility in Software Practice: A Practitioner’s Perspective’, ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology, 31(4), p. 66:1-66:26. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1145/3503508.
  • Bundesministerium fĂŒr Arbeit und Soziales (2021) ‘Bericht der Bundesrepublik Deutschland an die EuropĂ€ische Kommission ĂŒber die periodische Überwachung der Einhaltung der Barrierefreiheitsanforderungen von Websites und mobilen Anwendungen öffentlicher Stellen gemĂ€ĂŸ Artikel 8 der Richtlinie (EU) 2016/2102’, (1. Berichtszeitraum 01.01.2020-22.12.2021).
  • Erlandson, R.F. (2007) Universal and Accessible Design for Products, Services, and Processes. Boca Raton: CRC Press. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1201/9781420007664.
    EuropĂ€isches Parlament, Rat der EuropĂ€ischen Union (2019) Richtlinie (EU) 2019/882 des EuropĂ€ischen Parlaments und des Rates vom 17. April 2019 ĂŒber die Barrierefreiheitsanforderungen fĂŒr Produkte und Dienstleistungen. Available at: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2019/882/oj?locale=de (Accessed: 28 February 2023).
  • Fuglerud, K. (2014) Inclusive design of ICT: The challenge of diversity. Available at: https://doi.org/10.13140/2.1.4471.5844.
  • MĂŒller, C. (2018) ‘Introduction to the Thematic Focus “Socio-Informatics”’, Media in Action, 2(1), pp. 9–16.
  • Ogonowski, C. et al. (2018) PRAXLABS: A Sustainable Framework for User- Centered Information and Communication Technology Development – Cultivating Research Experiences from Living Labs in the Home, Wulf, Pipek et al. (Eds.): Socio-Informatics: A Practice-Based Perspective on the Design and Use of IT Artifacts. Oxford University Press, pp. 319–360. Available at: https://pub.h-brs.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/3568 (Accessed: 6 October 2022).
  • Ordoñez, K., Hilera, J. and Cueva, S. (2022) ‘Model-driven development of accessible software: a systematic literature review’, Universal Access in the Information Society, 21(1), pp. 295–324. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10209-020-00751-6.
  • Persson, H. et al. (2015) ‘Universal design, inclusive design, accessible design, design for all: different concepts—one goal? On the concept of accessibility—historical, methodological and philosophical aspects’, Universal Access in the Information Society, 14(4), pp. 505–526. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10209-014-0358-z.
  • Silva, J.S. e. et al. (2019) ‘Accessible software development: a conceptual model proposal’, Universal Access in the Information Society, 18(3), pp. 703–716. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10209-019-00688-5.