Nordic Accessibility Community Group meeting: October 23rd 2025

Date: Thursday, October 23, 2025
Time: 14:00–14:50 CET

Participants

Kosei Oki, Robin Liendeborg, Jakob Rosin, Tobias Nyhuus Jensen, Christer Janzon, Thomas Nielsen, Sander Bijsingh, Umut Gultekin, Anna-Liia Mattila, Sanna Kramsi, Erik Gustafsson Spagnoli

1. Monitoring & Enforcement Updates

Sweden

• Monitoring under the European Accessibility Act started two weeks ago.
• Companies are beginning to respond after a period of waiting to see how enforcement would unfold.
• Initial tests focus on:
  • Start page
  • Search functionality
  • Product page(s)
  • Accessibility documentation (e.g., accessibility statements)
• Four testers are currently employed; two more positions are planned.
• No consulting agencies are involved in the monitoring at this stage, and not expected in the near future.
• The initial scope is small – mainly large companies active in Sweden.
• There was agreement that consistency in testing across countries is important.

Denmark

• Published some accessibility resources and reached out to several companies.
• No central agency offering consulting or direct support to companies (unlike Estonia’s advisory approach).

Finland

• No major updates reported.

Estonia

• Government provides general guidance on accessibility but does not have dedicated staff for EAA monitoring.
• Discussion about potential inclusion of parcel lockers as part of the e-commerce flow under the EAA.

Action

• Erik & Tobias will both reach out to monitoring agencies (Sweden & Denmark) to ask about their testing language and monitoring status.
• WCAG 2.2, which is now approved as an ISO/IEC international standard (source). It is unclear whether some countries are actually using this version of WCAG when monitoring.

2. Education & Outreach

Accessibility in Higher Education

• General agreement that accessibility remains underrepresented in design and development curricula.
• Universities are typically slower to adapt, but some two-year schools include accessibility more actively.
• Anna-Liisa shared Maija Koivisto’s PhD defence on interpretation in higher education as an inspiring example (LinkedIn post).

Teach Access Europe

• Teach Access has expanded its activities to Europe: https://www.teachaccess.org/initiatives/europe/
• Tobias will contact Teach Access Europe.
• Anna-Liisa may reach out to them on behalf of Finland.
• Shared contact: info@teachaccess.org

Example from Denmark

• A student (Kosei) described an Accessibility Day at a Danish university covering laws, regulations, keyboard use, and font design.
• However, accessibility rarely becomes part of the curriculum since companies don’t demand it as a required skill.

3. Events & Interpretation

• Jakob and Tobias shared experiences from arranging AccessibleEU events with full accessibility support.
• The Danish setup includes:
  • Two Deaf interpreters
  • Two hearing “feeders” supporting them
  • Two live captioners
• Important learning: While inclusion is essential, booking interpreters without confirmed need can be sensitive due to interpreter scarcity.

4. Additional Resources Mentioned

• WCAG 2.2 approved as ISO/IEC standard – W3C press release
• The Inclusive Speaker by Denis Boudreau – inklusiv.ca/books

Next Steps / Follow-up:

• Erik to gather monitoring status updates from agencies.
• Tobias to contact Teach Access Europe.
• Anna-Liisa to (potentially) explore Finnish outreach to Teach Access.
• Continue sharing national EAA monitoring experiences at next meeting.