The Nordic Accessibility Community Group serves as an open forum to discuss challenges, network with accessibility professionals, and promote the importance of inclusive design in the Nordic countries.
Group's public email, repo and wiki activity over time
Note: Community Groups are proposed and run by the community. Although W3C hosts these
conversations, the groups do not necessarily represent the views of the W3C Membership or staff.
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A Slack discussion regarding a talk at a conference where E-commerce union representant was claiming they have an agreement with the government that no fines will be delivered. Investigation further to the claim is ongoing.
E-books
Finland will have a meeting next week with authorities and actors on the market for discussing E-book metadata. W3C draft publication published for E-books, Miia will update the information on Github for E-book metadata. Metadata for e-books is quite well established so it is not very aligned with demands from the EAA.
Sweden are waiting with E-books since the consitution conflicts with changes. They do need to comply with the requirements anyways since Finland and other countries have the demands in place.
Although audio books are not included, if you provide E-books you still need to comply. And if you sell services, products or subscriptions you are an e-commerce provider and need to be accessible.
SL said 10 hours per document to fix accessibility with a total of 11 million Swedish crowns. Was not accepted as disproportionate burden and they have been sanctioned with 300 000 SEK.
French minister of culture calculated already published e-books cost in the ballpark of 200 million euros.
Courts reduced the fine for Pajala Bostäder, the court seems to have misunderstood the law. Ended up being reduced to 25 000 SEK from 1 100 000 SEK (source). Court decision: 4351-24 Härnösands förvaltningsrätten.
Erik Gustafsson Spagnoli (taking notes), Nadia Törnroos, Christer Janzon, Sander Nijsingh, Anna-Liisa Mattila, Robin Liendeborg, Robin Whittleton, Torbjörn Lahrin.
Meeting notes
(IAAP) Certifications in companies, is it a must?
University in Finland, not offering it to employees but requiring for services they buy. Most of participants says it is offered but not required. For procurements we see that companies are asking for it. In the future it will most likely be a hard requirement with certification. There’s advantages since it is an objective way to compare though it can still be uncertainty of level of knowledge. Would be great with alternative to IAAP that is more focused on Europe and the EAA.
Procurements discussion
It would be good to have a certification for the ones doing procurements. Putting too many demands can lead to no product available to buy. Maybe a partial support/ support with roadmap of fixes could be an alternative to ensure improvements are made. They do this in Netherlands. It will take a long time to get products accessible for public procurements.
It is still very vague how to document and report errors. Clarification of that if you sell to EU market you need to conform with the EAA. Placing on the market defintion.
The group continued discussions on spoken subtitles, referencing the ongoing discussion thread in the GitHub repository: GitHub Discussion #9.
Experiments and Examples:
Pär shared insights from his experiments with Able Player, which allows toggling and customizing spoken closed captions. Notably, it enables captions to pause the video’s audio when spoken:
Sander mentioned that in the Netherlands, an accessible video player has been developed by the government, supporting toggling audio descriptions, and downloading separate accessibility assets (video-only, transcript, or audio description). Example video: https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/documenten/videos/2022/10/10/video-tim-ter-haar
Requirements are Unclear:
The group discussed a key question: What are the actual requirements for spoken subtitles?
Should there be a button to enable spoken subtitles for all users (not just screen reader users)?
How should these be presented to ensure compliance?
EAA Uncertainties
The group exchanged thoughts on the upcoming EAA, which is set to take effect later this summer. Currently, much remains unclear across different countries.
Observations & Open Questions:
Sweden:
Companies must self-report accessibility shortcomings to the monitoring agency.
No official templates exist—only law documents, which are vague about reporting requirements.
Uncertainty around public disclosure:
How much detail should companies provide?
What level of transparency is required?
Enforcement & Penalties:
No clear answers yet on penalties for non-compliance.
Question: Will monitoring agencies collaborate across countries or operate independently? Likely the latter.
Cross-Country Collaboration:
The EAA mentions a collaboration group (Article 28) for enforcement coordination, but this group does not appear to have been established yet.
Accessibility of WAD Statements:
WAD (Web Accessibility Directive) statements are often written in complex, inaccessible language.
However, the process of creating them forces organizations to engage with accessibility, potentially improving their practices.
3. Upcoming Meetups & Events
Pär shared details on two upcoming accessibility meetups, external to the Nordic Accessibility Community Group, but open to all:
April 1st – Stockholm (Topic: Accessible Self-Service Terminals)
Time: 13:00–17:00
Free to attend
April 28th – Malmö & Online (Topic: Accessible Events)
Time: 13:00–17:00
Free to attend
4. Homework & Next Steps
Collect information on each country’s monitoring agency, enforcement expectations, penalties, and collaboration efforts. Put your findings in the GitHub discussion: GitHub Discussion #3
Any clarity—however small—is valuable.
Goal: For us to be able to map similarities/differences and provide better guidance for those navigating compliance.
It is hard to land common understanding regarding 11.7.
Wish for easy to use feedback: This is what 11.7 should be and why.
Pär will add a discussion thread in the repo.
Preconditions will probably sort out issues with websites/ app and ICT.
Example: “For ICT that has a physical button”.
Discussion about https://www.w3.org/TR/coga-usable/#support-a-personalized-and-familiar-interface-pattern and how different cognitive accessibility writings can be a bit confusing.
Summary This session focused on improving collaboration through the Github repository, drafting test procedures, and managing updates to accessibility standards. Until the next meeting, members should contribute to the repository, review drafts, and highlight key issues. The next session will address unresolved topics, refine methods, and plan the next steps.
Umut Gültekin, Robin Whittleton, Sander Nijsingh, Christer Janzon, Thomas Nielsen, Miia Kirsi, Erik Gustafsson Spagnoli.
Agenda
Discuss our approach: How can we benefit from researching, discussing, and learning about the differences and connections between EN 301 549 and WCAG?
Plan future efforts: What specific questions or areas should we prioritize in our study group?
Collaborate effectively: How can we ensure that our discussions contribute to the broader understanding of accessibility standards?
Whether you’ve been working with these standards for a while or are just beginning to explore them, we encourage everyone to join the discussion. This session will be a collaborative effort to outline the goals and methods of our study group, and your input will help shape the direction we take.
Robin: Unit measurement, inches vs cm, currency etc.
Very complex when two currencies needs to be displayed.
Color
High contrast, Dark mode are included in EN-standard.
If you fail Name, Role Value – why fail both that and EN 11.5.2.5 Object information?
Has any one compared reports from different countries?
In the Netherlands they test only for WCAG as of now and not the EN standard.
A lot harder demands on documents in Canada and assembly manuals for IKEA now needs ALT-texts (where they are today just images without translated texts).
Look at copies of tests from Nordic countries and compare. What do they fail and do they explain the fail and so on?
It would be great if we as a group could have a consensus on fails and non fails.
Additions to the differences in countries applying more for the EAA apart from the standard.
Set up a repo like the Netherlands.
How does the accessibility documentation (statements) look like in the different EU countries. Create a Github issue.
EN-standard updates, how do we keep track?
Conclusion
There’s a lot of uncertainty of different monitoring bodies in different countries. How to know where they are, how they will fail, what kind of documentation do they demand? There also seems to be differences in the accessibility community in views of what is included and not. Our main suggestion on going forward is to set up a Github repo so we all can share the effort of documenting, adding questions and discussing EN and WCAG topics for the Nordic countries. By this we will slowly but surely find a common ground on how to test, what to test and have a common place for information about monitoring.
Erik GS and Sander will set this up together and share with the rest of the group when we can start collaborating.
The discussion group format is a good way to discuss topics in a more focused manner.
What are the Nordic aspects of our group?
Open discussion about the purpose and objectives of this group:
We have had two purpose workshops in the past. Notes from the latest session: Purpose Workshop 2024
Tobias says he originally came for the opportunity to network with accessibility people in a structured way, not in a US time zone.
Is the purpose of this Community Group mainly networking?
We want to raise awareness of accessibility in the Nordics in general.
We have previously had success with our education and outreach group, pushing higher education to include accessibility in their curriculum.
Two purposes that Anne sees:
Ensure Nordic interests are represented in the different task-force groups at W3C. (E.g., WCAG, Maturity model, ACT, etc.)
We could do this by collectively writing public comments on the drafts.
Study groups could be helpful in figuring out how to best participate in W3C work groups.
It is suggested to have a talk about the EN 301 549 vs WCAG gaps and bridges.
How to structure a study group and its topics
One idea is to have two study groups per session that can discuss a topic (in breakout rooms) and present it in the larger group. For instance, a European Accessibility Act (EAA) discussion/roundtable session to see the different implementations and additions of the EAA in the Nordic countries is interesting.
To gauge the Community Group’s interest, we will create a vote on which topics people would be interested in discussing/studying:
ACT-rules
EN 301 549 interpretations, gaps, and bridges to WCAG
How are countries monitoring the EN standard apart from WCAG?
Contribution to the Accessibility Maturity Model
Accessibility in higher education
WCAG3
Tobias will set up a poll in Slack and link to it through the community email group.
Can we reach out to current W3C members in the Nordic?
There are 10 members in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden:
Aalto University
Agency for Digitalization
Criipto
ERICSSON
National Library of Sweden
Regional State Administrative Agency for Southern Finland
Siteimprove
Stiftelsen for internetinfrastruktur (IIS)
Tampere University
Whereby
How can we benefit from and contribute to W3C?
Simo: Been in the COGA group.
Anne: Previous W3 group experience has been more official with a specific task. More of a networking group as it feels now. Are there any demands from W3C in terms of using the brand for a networking group?
Stein-Erik: Get a start on the W3C groups. Is there a study group for how to participate better?
Last Tuesday, we hosted our second purpose workshop, a follow-up to the good session we had more than a year ago, in January 2023.
The goal was to refine our focus and bolster our sense of purpose as we strive to make an impact with accessibility across the Nordics.
We had a nice and engaging discussion, with many valuable suggestions on how to enhance our community’s activities. Key themes included:
Public talks, knowledge-sharing and presence: Several expressed interest in seeing us do more public talks and creating a stronger presence in the accessibility landscape.
Boosting physical interaction in the group: There’s a desire for more physical meetups and networking opportunities to strengthen our community bonds.
Meeting formats: We discussed the format of our meetings and the overarching purpose of our group. We will explore setting up other types of sessions and look to strengthen the ties between accessibility, the Nordics, and W3C.
Educational initiatives: A recurring theme was the importance of education, with ideas ranging from incorporating accessibility into school curricula to advocating for ACT rules in the Nordics.
New initiatives:
We’re excited to be introducing study groups and discussion groups—focused sessions where we can get deeper into specific topics. I’ll be helping to kickstart these groups and am looking forward to participating alongside many of you!
We will also continue with our retrospective-style sessions, so we can keep reflecting on our challenges and achievements together, and brainstorming future actions.
Community talks:
Our community talks have been a highlight, and we’re eager to keep the momentum going. We already have talks scheduled for later this month and August, but we’re on the lookout for speakers for future sessions. If you’re interested in giving a talk, please reach out!
For a detailed overview of the workshop and to see the full list of suggestions, check out the Purpose Workshop Document.
Thank you to everyone who participated and contributed their ideas. I look forward to continuing our good work and discussions together!
As co-chair of the Nordic Accessibility Community Group, I’m pleased to update you on our series of community talks.
These sessions are designed to deepen our understanding and enhance our practices around web accessibility, serving as a vital platform for both knowledge-sharing and professional development. Through these talks, we aim to equip our members and the broader community with the tools and insights needed to promote accessibility in digital environments effectively.
Reflections: Jean-Yves Moyen’s Insightful Session
Our series began with Jean-Yves Moyen’s talk on Tuesday, May 21st, titled “ACT: Towards Consistent Accessibility Conformance Testing”. Jean-Yves provided an in-depth look at the ACT Rules framework, emphasizing its importance for consistent accessibility testing. It was an enlightening session that covered the structure of the ACT ruleset, its application, and its benefits for creators, tool developers, and users.
Upcoming: Emma Dawson’s Presentation on Focus Management
We invite you to join us for the next talk featuring Emma Dawson, scheduled for Tuesday, June 18th at 14:00. Emma will address “Making Interactions More Accessible with Focus Management”. She will discuss practical techniques for improving feedback to keyboard and screen reader users, illustrated with examples from recent accessibility audits. This is an excellent opportunity to enhance your understanding of effective focus management in web accessibility; an all too often overlooked part of making digital experiences accessible.
Looking Ahead: Pär Lannerö’s Presentation on Spreading Accessibility Between Job Roles
Also, save the date for Thursday, August 15th, when Pär Lannerö will lead a session titled “Bread and Butter Accessibility”. This discussion will focus on how to distribute accessibility responsibilities across various roles within an organization and through different stages of the development process. The session will include a 15-minute presentation followed by a 20-minute discussion, promising valuable insights into incorporating accessibility into daily operations.
Invitation to Speak
If you have expertise in web accessibility and wish to contribute to our community, we would be glad to hear from you. Please consider sharing your knowledge by speaking at one of our future events. These talks are a vital way to ensure knowledge-sharing both within our group and to the broader community, supporting those who aim to improve their accessibility practices.
For more information about our talks and to get involved, please reach out to me or one of the other co-chairs.
On sept 19, 2023 I gave an insight into the state of digital accessibility in The Netherlands. Here’s a summary of this presentation.
Law and order
Since 2008 there has been a non-binding agreement between public organisations to be digitally accessible. As a foundation for this, there were the so-called “Web Guidelines”. These are basically WCAG 2.0 A and AA plus some extra requirements, such as friendly URLs.
These Web Guidelines have been superseded by a temporary conversion into national law of the Web Accessibility Directive. This temporary order will become part of a bigger Law on Digital Government. In the current order, there are no sanctions for not complying. This might change when the Law on Digital Government comes into force.
The European Accessibility Act has not yet been converted into national law.
Monitoring and dashboard
There is one monitoring body, Logius, which monitors the accessibility statements and helps public organisations with improving their digital accessibility. Their website is digitoegankelijk.nl.
All public organisations need to publish an accessibility statement in a fixed form with an online tool. All these statements are available at toegankelijkheidsverklaring.nl/register.
If you want to state that a website or app fully or partially complies to the Web Accessibility Directive, there must be a WCAG accessibility audit report as a foundation. This report is valid for 3 years.
An accessibility statement can have one of the following statuses:
E: no statement published.
D: no audit planned.
C: audit planned, but not yet done.
B: audit shows there are still some failures.
A: audit show conformance to the Web Accessibility Directive.
Right now the register of accessibility statements is being transferred into a dashboard: dashboard.digitoegankelijk.nl. This shows even more information about the state of accessibility at the Dutch government as a whole and per organisation.
WCAG audits
WCAG audits need to be done according to the evaluation method WCAG-EM. As a public organisation you can do it yourself, but this usually is outsourced.
It is possible to divide an audit into a technical audit and a content audit. In the technical audit, the auditor reviews 43 success criteria from a technical perspective. In a content audit, the auditor reviews 30 success criteria from a content perspective. There are some overlaps and these numbers are for WCAG 2.1 A+AA reports and will change for WCAG 2.2.
Miscellaneous
There is a national programme for help and support for public organisations.
Most – if not all – public organisations have accessibility as requirement in procurement.
If you are a web agency, designer or software builder and if you have proven that you can make digitally accessible products or services, you can apply to be listed on ddai.nl/aanbieders (Dutch Digital Accessibility Index). This is a commercial initiative for organisations that are looking for accessible suppliers.
Sheets
You can download the PowerPoint sheets from our Slack channel (I cannot upload it here). Please let me know if you run into any problems with this.
