Nordic Accessibility Community Group meeting: January 27th 2026
Participants
Tobias Nyhuus Jensen (host), Erik Gustafsson Spagnoli (taking notes), Jakob Rosin, Kosei Oki, Sander Nijsingh, Umut Gultekin, Anna-Liisa Mattila, Christer Janzon.
Notes
Update from Teach Access Europe
Tobias gave an update on his involvement in the new Teach Access Europe initiative, as Teach Access expands its model from the US into Europe.
He explained that the aim is to make digital accessibility a standard part of higher education, so future designers and developers learn accessibility by default.
He outlined the three European working areas: building a sustainable European organisation, integrating accessibility into teaching and workforce pathways, and influencing accreditation, policy, and research.
Tobias shared practical examples, including ready-made curriculum, support and funding for educators, practical training for non-experts, and providing help for organisations with their hiring practices so accessibility skills are expected.
If anyone is interested in joining the working groups, even if only to try it out, reach out to info@teachaccess.org.
More about the initiative can be found here: https://www.teachaccess.org/initiatives/europe/
Update on Swedish EAA timeline
PTS (the Swedish Post and Telecom Authority) is actively monitoring products, such as computers and smartphones, and e-commerce, where focus is mainly on websites. PTS is actively monitoring 17 websites and 14 products.
There is no active monitoring or plan for passenger transport services, says Transportstyrelsen.
Mediemyndigheten needs to await a constitutional change for most of the actors in audiovisual media, which will be ready in 2027. They will, in the meantime, wait and evaluate which actors they can start monitoring that are not affected by the needed constitutional change.
Myndigheten för tillgängliga medier (MTM) is also awaiting a constitutional change for E-books, but will start monitoring the software part during 2026.
Table for monitoring in the presentation: European Accessibility Act (EAA): Monitoring status
Webranking report and what it says about accessibility in Sweden
Topic postponed to next meeting.
Monitoring vs real-world adoption (Sweden vs rest of EU)
The mapping continues, with a lot of help from AccessibleEU representatives gathering contact information from the government agencies. The GitHub repository Table of countries under the EAA gets updates every week.
Belgium will not disclose any information at all regarding their monitoring – not even how many companies or products they monitor. We have asked them why there’s such secrecy.
Bulgaria’s status is very unclear due to changes in the elected government.
Estonia will soon be ready for the emergency services part of the EAA. Jakob will share information on that in one of our next meetings.
Getting an accessibility community like in Sweden
We talked about the t12t Meetups and community with engagement on channels such as Meetup.com and Slack. Denmark and Estonia could benefit from starting a community with support from t12t during AccessibleEU event hosting to build ongoing community that will last.
Next meeting
Next meeting will take place on February 18th at 14:00 – 14:50 CET.