How does the law change in 2025?

In 2025, many new companies will enter the area of accessibility requirements. In Finland, the law 306/2019 was amended in 2023 to include a greater number of organizations. 

The new law names all personal transportation, e-commerce, and audiobook services to be included. In 2020 and 2021,  public sector services, financial services, and many of society’s key functions, such as utilities, were already included in the scope.   

The law excludes microservices from accessibility requirements. These are defined as companies with an annual turnover of under 2 million euros.

The detailed requirements remain the same as they were when the EU directive was announced in 2018, only the number of organizations they apply to increases.

What does the law require?

The law requires that all digital services, web pages, mobile applications, smartwatch applications, stand-alone kiosks, ATMs, and so forth pass the requirements set in the EN standard.

Currently, the EU directive 2016/2102 refers to the EN 301 549. This means that websites should observe the accessibility requirements of WCAG 2.1, level AA.  Additionally, websites must include:

1. An accessibility statement concerning known issues and planned improvements.
2. A feedback channel that responds within 14 days of receiving feedback.

In practice, websites can have accessibility issues, but at minimum, you must declare them in a statement. Documenting instead of fixing accessibility issues is not the aim of the law, however.

What consequences does non-compliance have?

The EU accessibility initiative aims to make society more inclusive. Improving accessibility is thus a moral imperative for all organizations concerned about societal responsibility. 

Accessibility is enforced separately in every EU country. Failing to comply with the requirements can lead to a fine, which is proportional to the organization’s turnover. However, to date, there are no clear guidelines or publicly disclosed examples. From the trenches, we have become aware of notable conditional fines levied after the first wave of inspections in Finland.   

How are other companies managing accessibility challenges?

Different types of studies during the past five years have shown that much of the internet is not accessible. According to the widest-reaching study of one million website front pages by WebAim, only 4% of webpages had no issues that automated analysis could detect.

In Finland, the first public official accessibility surveillance report found none of the included 20 websites and four mobile apps were accessible.  Similarly, the Qvik study from 2020 involving fifteen popular Finnish apps discovered no accessible apps at all. 

This indicates two things. First of all, the old software development methods have not been tuned to produce accessible digital services by default. Second, despite the law, companies have not made a big effort to change the situation. This leaves plenty of opportunity to pioneer and innovate with accessible services.  

Why invest in accessible services?

For commercial operators, accessibility can bring additional revenue and save money. You can generate revenue by enabling underserved segments to spend on digital services, by finding new clientele, and by ensuring their smooth transactions. Also, people who don’t have special needs most of the time often benefit a lot from improved accessibility that improves usability for all. Innovative, accessible solutions can attract unexpected new customers from a far.

Cost savings occur in many ways. One of these is the increasing self-service rates across the company, as customers don’t have to contact customer support to complete their transactions or just to complain about their bad experiences. Research by Nucleus has revealed multiple ways poor accessibility increases traditional customer support load. Compliance with the law also mitigates legal risk, both in terms of governmental oversight and group litigation. The latter has been getting increasing attention, especially in the US, in recent years, where a group of law firms specializing in “Digital ADA lawsuits” has emerged.

What should you do next?

Your next step towards better accessibility depends on the stage in the lifecycle of a digital service yours is currently at.  

If you are concerned about your existing services, the path forward is to go through the portfolio of digital services provided and examine the accessibility of each service in turn. If you don’t know the level of accessibility of each service, the first step is to conduct an accessibility audit to find out how accessible the service is. Based on the findings, you should steer the development towards a path that will pave the way for an improved situation in 2025.

If you are building a new service, it’s best to invest in designing and developing accessible-by-default digital systems. Have accessibility specialists or advocates in your team to ensure constant quality assurance for accessibility aspects. Train your teams, developers and designers alike, to understand the basic facts and motivations of accessibility so they can learn more on the fly and become used to creating accessible solutions. 

The time goes by quickly, especially when dealing with legacy systems. Get a head start for 2024, and make sure your roadmap or portfolio of strategic initiatives mentions accessibility – so you won’t be late to the game next year!   

Did you enjoy this article? Take a look at more accessibility-related reads on our blog.

The post New accessibility requirements await in 2025 appeared first on Qvik.

I think the most useful persona type is behavioral personas, who are differentiated by what they do, not by who they claim to be. Their behavior is grounded in data in contrast to traditional personas, which often reflect convenient assumptions about people rather than reality. Falling somewhere in between these types are proto personas — a Lean UX compromise in the right direction, which nevertheless acknowledges its speculative nature.

Want to hear more about accessibility design, and prefer concrete and practical webinars? Join our Sovellusten saavutettavuusongelmien tunnistaminen käytännössä webinar on Wednesday 27.1.2021 at 3:00 PM to 4:15 PM GMT+2!

In the field of accessibility, we often find ourselves thinking about users with particular disabilities. This makes it easy to model them with behavioral personas to support inclusive and accessible-by-default design.

So I present to you: four personas you are free to use in your design process to think about how your specific design will support users with special needs.

Four personas for accessibility-minded design

I have intentionally left out the illustrations. If you feel like it, you can create them yourself.

Anna: Young, educated, sharp, and blind from birth

Being blind requires a totally new perspective to user experience. Many conventions of graphically-oriented interaction design break down when you are forced to operate with sound alone.

What special tools does this persona need to interact with technology:

• Screen readers
• Keyboard
• Braille display (unusual, but possible)

Typical issues this persona faces with digital services

• Some information is exclusively visual
• The screen reader may not get access to some information or controls
• Navigation can be daunting
• Keyboard access doesn’t work or gets stuck
• The language may be wrong

How to make sure this persona can use your service?

• The digital service must be accessible with a screen reader and keyboard
• Perform manual usability testing with screen readers
• Perform user testing with users who rely on screen readers

Bill: Poor vision, red-green color blind, aging

Bad eyesight is a common problem that gets worse with age. This issue has been around forever, but interface designers can easily forget about it if they don’t need reading glasses themselves.

What special-needs tools are available for them:

• Screen zoom
• Font enlargement
• Grayscale mode

Typical issues this persona faces with digital services

• Reading small text is impossible
• Mobile phone use is cumbersome with screen magnification. If magnification is not supported by the app, Bill can’t use it.
• Bill sometimes misses details because differences are highlighted with colors he can’t tell apart.

How to make sure Bill can use your service?

• Test UI designs in grayscale mode
• Test the product for zooming and text enlargement on desktop and mobile

Charlie: Middle-aged, working professional in a wheelchair with fine motor skill disabilities

Using a wheelchair poses few limitations for IT use as such, but using touch screens, pads or even a mouse is impossible if you have trouble moving your arms. However, most computing tasks can be achieved with a keyboard on both computers and mobile devices.

What special-needs ways does this persona have to interact with technology:

• Exclusive keyboard user
• Fixed tablet device

Typical issues this persona faces with digital services

• Fly-out menus and tooltips don’t work
• If keyboard navigation support is lacking, Charlie can’t access all functionality
• Apps that would require touch gestures are impossible to use
• Some mobile apps are hard to use because Charlie can’t pivot his scre

How to make sure this persona can use your service?

• The service must be accessible with a keyboard
• Apps must support both orientations
• Mobile interfaces should not include functionalities that require gestures (sliding switches, pinching, tapping); provide alternatives

Ezra: Middle-aged person with ADHD and dyslexia, working part time

Cognitive disabilities don’t make anything impossible, just harder and slower. Simplifying language and controls makes things easier for everybody and can be of particular help to people who have trouble focusing.

• What special-needs ways does this persona have to interact with technology:
• Slowing down media, taking time to read, avoiding complex language, removing distracting elements

Typical issues this persona faces with digital services

• Flashing ads or auto-play videos distract and distress Ezra
• Interruptions and abandoning certain sites or apps
• Doing things takes more time and services may sometimes time out before she/he is done

How to make sure this persona can use your service?

• Prefer simple, self-explanatory terms and language over jargon
• Be consistent in language and user interface design to support learning
• Do not use auto-play audiovisual content in your service and provide appropriate controls

Conclusions: How to utilize these personas to help create accessible products and services?

These four personas capture a variety of reasons why accessibility is a consideration in the first place. There are millions of people in the world who have special needs when it comes to digital services. This “proto behavioral persona” spectrum describes a few of the most essential characteristics: being blind or having poor eyesight, motor dysfunctions, or cognitive disabilities.

The way each disability is supported by a service is the measure of accessibility. The suggestions I have provided with each persona can be easily mapped into accessibility requirements such as WCAG success criteria, but I have intentionally avoided them to keep this proposition as understandable as possible.

I welcome your feedback and ideas on how to make the personas better. A digital society with equal rights of participation requires every designer and developer to keep accessibility on their agenda!

The post Four personas to help you create accessible digital services appeared first on Qvik.

Accessibility testing is conducted using some criteria. The statutory standards are a poor fit for evaluating app accessibility. To guarantee the reliability of testing, Qvik developed its own evaluation method, the Qvik Mobile Application Audit. The method is fully compliant with the requirements of the European standard.

Qvik’s proprietary method defines how applications should work with various assistive technology solutions. The test ensures that the application is compliant with requirements and accessible to people using for instance, screen readers, keyboards or switch access devices.

We chose the Qvik Mobile Accessibility Audit method’s most critical and telling tests for our accessibility test for Finnish applications.

Assessing app accessibility can be a challenge

Automatic testing, manual testing and user surveys can all be used to evaluate accessibility. The same principles can be applied to web sites, apps or stand-alone kiosk devices

Even though the tools are there, evaluating the accessibility of native apps still means a lot of work: automatic testing doesn’t cover everything, manual testing takes considerable effort, and a user survey is still needed to ultimately confirm the service’s accessibility.

The most cost-effective option is to combine extensive manual testing by experts complemented by a user study.

How we evaluated the accessibility of Finland’s top apps

We charted the current state of app accessibility by testing 15 applications in both iOS and Android versions, i.e. 30 software products in total. We only picked free applications available in both app stores.

The sample included banking, telecommunications, health care, media and food industry apps. At least two applications were chosen from each sector. The apps were picked from the national Top50 lists and had at least 100,000 downloads in the Play store for inclusion.

We ruled out applications that cater exclusively to sighted users, like video streaming services.

We performed a light accessibility test for each application with a single up-to-date device running iOS 14 (iPhone) or Android 10 (Samsung) operating systems. The test looked at the following factors:

1. Overall usability with a screen reader
2. Keyboard use
3. Control labeling
4. View structuring
5. Navigability
6. Authentication
7. Font enlargement
8. Horizontal use

The tests were performed by executing a typical use case and examining the app’s first-time user experience and menu structure. The test didn’t address multi-step purchasing or registration functionalities. The applications were graded on a scale of 0–5 (fail, poor, passable, satisfactory, good and excellent) for each criterion.

With this approach, we were quickly able to find major accessibility issues affecting the user experience. More extensive user testing or a Qvik Mobile Accessibility Audit would probably reveal many more issues, but that was not the objective of this test.

Based on these criteria, it is safe to say that if an app did not pass this test, neither would it pass a more rigorous audit.

Results: everyone failed, but in varying degrees

None of the applications passed all the test criteria and would thus need changes to comply with the new legislation.

But if we look at the results in terms of the accessibility potential of these applications, the situation shows some promise. Nearly all of the apps already have accessibility-promoting features, but still need a lot of work to achieve a good accessibility grade.

In short, it’s not all doom and gloom.

The most common grade achieved by iOS applications was “good” and that of Android apps “satisfactory”, but the gap between the operating systems was surprisingly narrow, as you can see from Figure 1. The Android version of some applications even beat the iPhone.

Figure 1. The accessibility scores received by each of fifteen apps. iOS and Android versions illustrated in parallel as well the operating systems average.

The iOS version of Koronavilkku had the best accessibility and was closest to the level of compliance. In this video you can see how the iOS version of the app works with a screen reader. Congratulations to the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare for a great acquisition!

There were poor apps in all business domains. One Android application failed the test completely due to a total lack of support for assistive technologies.

Typical shortcomings in app accessibility

The test revealed a lot of shortcomings in the apps, so nominating the biggest issue is no easy task . Font size scaling was one of the most common issues and was missing completely from as many as 60 percent of the apps and fully functional only in 10%. From the technical point of view, the problem is caused by a fixed definition of font size instead of a scaling one.

My hunch was that the most serious problems would involve horizontal use, but this feature was completely absent from only one in three applications.

Figure 2. The proportion of apps which fully satisfy each of our seven criteria used in this test. Partially compliant ones were not counted.

Deficiencies in labeling, i.e. the additional information picked from the app by assistive technologies, were almost as common. These problems concern screen reader users, since having the screen reader say “button” really doesn’t tell you much about what will happen if you press it.

To recap, the biggest issues were:

• Font scaling
• Horizontal use
• Incomplete labeling

In addition to typical problems, critical issues are another interesting metric. Critical issues include “traps” in otherwise well-behaving applications that can leave user “stuck” in a view with no way back. This could be something like opening a full-screen window that you can’t close any more. These types of issues were found in regrettably many apps.

Perhaps the saddest example was a sliding toggle used to confirm a critical function in one of the apps. Unfortunately, there was no way to use the slider without physically swiping the screen with your finger. With a screen reader, you could make the slider stutter towards the apex of the swiping movement one step at a time, but that was it. Offering an alternative control method to gestures is a basic requirement in the WCAG 2.1 criteria.

Application accessibility 2021 – now’s the time to get your act together

The Act on the Provision of Digital Services entered into force in 2019, and its scope will be extended from online services to applications on 23 June 2021. In the first phase, this will only apply to the applications of public officials and certain sectors specified in the Act. But this category covers many important services, like government services, insurance and utility companies, and a variety of other public services.

The purpose of the legislation is to promote equal access to digital services, which are often the most convenient way to take care of your everyday affairs.

The accessibility of applications is an essential driver of equality in the modern information society. For example, strong digital authentication will be much more prevalent after the entry into force of PSD2, and mobile applications are the primary channel for strong authentication.

In Finland, compliance with the Act is monitored by the State Regional Administrative Agency (AVI) for Southern Finland. AVI Southern Finland has announced that it will audit the accessibility of at least four applications in 2021. The Agency can oblige the applications’ publishers to correct defects, and can even impose conditional fines based on reports of non-compliance.

Illustration: Joel Pöllänen

The post Evaluating native app accessibility – see how 15 popular Finnish apps did. appeared first on Qvik.

Most mobile use cases don’t rely on super senses, however. The visually impaired need to be able to call their moms and receive SMS delivery notifications too.

The pre-smartphone era phone  with its buttons was handy for the visually impaired. A physical keypad made it possible to dial numbers blind, at least in theory. Even though the good old button phone is now a rare sight, the idea lives on: you can still connect a keyboard to your phone via Bluetooth. But that is not an adequate solution for visually impaired phone users, who need a screen reader, voice assistant and other assistive technologies to handle everyday tasks.

A screen reader is a program that does exactly what it says on the tin: it reads out loud what’s on your screen. You might be surprised to learn that every iPhone comes with an in-built screen reader, and they are available for free for Android too. On Apple devices, the function is called VoiceOver, while on Android it is TalkBack.

A shocking  UX

Using a screen reader makes a fundamental difference to how you use your phone. When a sighted digital native switches it on by accident, the first reaction is a panicked “how do I switch this off!!!???”

Sighted users are used to browsing through masses of text and images, scanning them for interesting stuff and reacting to it in various ways almost instantly. This core behavior pattern can’t be transferred to a screen reader. You can’t make important buttons stand out by highlighting them in red.

https://twitter.com/Kristy_Viers/status/1287189581926981634

For most people, listening to a radio transmission or an audio book would probably be the most familiar analogy for the screen reader experience. Everything is described in meticulous sequence. You can’t scroll the screen back and forth frantically, but have to know where to jump to continue listening. That’s why audio books are divided into chapters and you can add bookmarks to them, and radio programs follow a schedule.

This same principle holds for using apps with a screen reader. The developers have to program the app so that the screen reader identifies the “chapter titles” and other important bits and can read them out loud.

Navigation by landmarks

Kaisa Penttilä, an expert working for the Finnish Federation of the Visually Impaired, says users navigate with screen readers by jumping between elements serving as “landmarks”. International studies have also confirmed that this is how the blind and visually impaired use mobile devices.

The elements used for navigation are headers, links and buttons.

These navigation elements are usually in their right places in web browsers, but can be all over the place in apps. At worst, the elements can be completely invisible and inaudible to screen reader users.

It provides some slight relief if the user can direct the screen reader to objects on the screen with their fingers. This navigation method is called touch exploration, but Penttilä fondly refers to it as “drifting”.

When you drift, the screen reader reads whatever your finger happens to touch, which can help a little if the application doesn’t present things in logical order by itself.   It’s a good trick to know, especially with poorly accessible applications that have functionalities you couldn’t use otherwise.

Wait, there’s more!

Operating systems are equipped with other assistive technologies in addition to screen readers. Functions like zooming, increasing font size or inverting colors are primarily intended for visually impaired users. Device manufacturers have also designed other assistance solutions for people with motor disabilities.

iOS devices have the most extensive array of assistive features. Of the Android manufacturers, Samsung offers a broad selection of accessibility functions. Other Android vendors don’t offer quite the same level of support .

Can you get by with a screen reader?

Once you get past the initial shock, using your mobile with a screen reader is by no means an impossible proposition, especially for textual content. In certain scenarios, even seeing users can get added value from listening to their phones while focusing their eyes on something completely else (say, when navigating).  You can also manage many everyday tasks, such as payments and online shopping, with a combination of a screen reader and keyboard.

So, to answer the question in the header, you can get by with a screen reader, just don’t expect the same UX as with a graphical user interface. It’s a completely different experience, which serves to remind designers that you can’t build a good auditory interface by following graphical design guidelines.

According to Qvik’s ongoing research, life is not easy if you need to rely on a screen reader. Services that require strong user authentication, so common in our information society today, are especially challenging.

Qvik can help with improving accessibility

Qvik can help if you are unsure about your application’s accessibility or have already committed to improving it, but lack the expertise in your own organization. We offer accessibility services from baseline analysis and assessments to projects for improving accessibility with both immediate and long-term measures, from auditing and corrections to development team training.

We build solutions that are accessible by design and by default, so that you don’t have to make slow, costly and less effective modifications to finished solutions.

Illustration: Joel Pöllänen

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“OmaPosti has become the cornerstone of Posti’s strategy over the years. Users can take Posti’s services with them wherever they go, while we get invaluable data on the changing needs of our customers”, says Timo Korander, the person largely behind OmaPosti’s development strategy at Posti.

Qvik came into the picture soon after the initial release of OmaPosti in 2017. We redesigned the app’s user interface and did further development on the application, especially on native mobile platforms. The improvements in the service were quickly reflected in both user numbers and ratings.

Growth numbers and ratings are from Aug. 2019 – Jan. 2020.

App store ratings have a big influence on users’ download decisions. If a service provider is not happy about their application’s ratings, they can still take decisive action and get the stars their service deserves, if they just approach the users in the right way. This was the playbook for OmaPosti as well.

“Qvik was essential in bringing to the table expertise that we lacked, for example in user interfaces, native mobile solutions and payments.”

You don’t know much before you test your hypotheses

Posti bases its development on a combination of quantitative and qualitative data. Starting with OmaPosti, the use of in-depth user interviews in service development has spread throughout Posti’s organization. Combining these interviews with user data reveals development needs and helps prioritize development efforts.

Posti has great premises for data-driven service development. Every update reaches a huge number of users immediately upon release, and any problems will come to light quickly if you only know where to look.

“Even our most experienced team members have been surprised by how far off the mark your own hypotheses can be after you open a service to 1.3 million consumers and the real user data starts coming in.”

This was the case with OmaPosti’s main view, which had a very different layout on the initial release.

“User data and feedback quickly revealed that the + symbol used for adding deliveries and bills was not clear enough, and users had not discovered the function. So our first order of business was to make adding packages and invoices clearer”, says Designer Jukka Forsten from Qvik.

Forsten redesigned the OmaPosti application’s user interface and also contributed to the design of the OmaPosti web service. He was also tasked with harmonizing OmaPosti services across different channels in the design system spirit. Forsten was a part of the OmaPosti team until January 2020.

“Another major insight was that we were showing the package’s delivery stages, prices, dates and sundry other information in the same column. Putting such a variety of information in one place confused users and did not provide any added value”, Forsten says.

OmaPosti design evolution – After redesign App Store rating increased from 1.8 to 4.4.

Improvements were made gradually as feedback, user data and the results of user surveys came in. The upcoming EU Accessibility Directive’s requirements were also taken into account in the design from the ground up.

“The first version of the service was also kind of engineery, and we wanted to change that”, Forsten says. “User interviews and feedback also quickly revealed what users couldn’t find and what needed highlighting. The interviews shed light on many issues identified with payments, for instance.”

OmaPosti’s convenient payment function is one of the service’s key features. Payments are implemented with Posti’s Payment Gateway, which supports a number of different payment methods and makes it easy to add new ones.

User-oriented and accessibility-first development

OmaPosti has risen to the top of the app store download rankings on several occasions in Finland. It was no accident, but the result of ambitious targets, user surveys and bold data-driven development.

“We’ve climbed to the top in app store downloads, even though OmaPosti is not an entertainment service and its popularity can’t be compared to social media or games, for example”, Korander says.

The pole position is not the result of major marketing campaigns, but rather the growth hacking mentality applied to development. The service’s design has focused on the right things, and that shows in the results.

“It was fantastic to be given such free rein in this project. Posti really trusted the expertise of the team. The developers were hardcore, and we had quite a lot of freedom in our work, though we did of course discuss our plans with Posti”, Forsten says.

OmaPosti reaped international accolades

OmaPosti won the top prize in the World Post and Parcel Award 2020 competition’s online store category and also made the GrandOne 2019 gala finals in Finland.

Omaposti was Grand One Finalist and won the World post & parcel awards.

Posti believes the recognition to be due to the bold development work behind the app. It has taken years of development to bring OmaPosti to where it is today, and the application’s development is far from finished.

“OmaPosti has been a success story inside Posti too. Its strategic role has grown beyond anyone’s wildest imaginings,” Korander says.

“The awards and accolades were actually not a surprise to us – we’ve certainly put in the time and money. Winning an international award of course shows that our work stands up to global comparison as well.”

The world keeps turning and the development continues

Posti has just recently published its new brand, and OmaPosti is getting a slightly new look as well. Qvik had its fingers deep in the UI design pie this time too.

“OmaPosti has been shaped into what it is by our data-driven and user-oriented approach, which will continue to mold it in the future too”, says Korander.

Numbers for the app: Store & Google Play rating 4.4, Over 3 million parcels tracked, Monthly active users 904000 and growth in usage 94%
Growth numbers and ratings are from Aug. 2019 – Jan. 2020.

Qvik has been involved in many Posti projects, including OmaPosti, Payment Gateway and OneAccount, and the cooperation continues.

“Working with the Qvikies is really fun and hassle-free. All who have worked on the team over the years – whether on OmaPosti or in our Payments team – have been super competent and great team players. That’s always been a major consideration for us.”

Qvik’s role in OmaPosti

App & web UX and UI design
iOS & Android development

The post OmaPosti’s data-driven design took the service to another level appeared first on Qvik.

In the real world, VR has been accessible for a long time. Their trains and stations are planned to cater for special needs, and disability associations have been involved in their planning from the start. Now VR’s digital services have also been brought into line with the company’s values of equality and responsibility.

“The first service in which we incorporated accessibility thinking from the design phase on was the renewal of our new ticket vending machines”, says VR’s Head of Digital Services & Marketing, Vanessa Lehtinen.

“Our new website now works with a screen reader and can be used by people with impaired vision. Rewriting the texts and improving their layout played a large role in the update.”

VR sees the new Accessibility Directive as a welcome improvement, as it accelerates the implementation of these updates. Accessibility is taken into consideration in all of VR’s new digital services, even though VR is not a government authority and is thus not obligated to follow the Directive yet.

“We did have to think about how far accessibility could currently be implemented at the level of individual features, though”, Lehtinen says. “For example, buying a ticket from the class you want is accessible at the moment, but picking a specific seat from the wagon map is not possible with a screen reader.”

Accessible content improves usability for everyone

The website has a nice special feature related to accessibility: When you implement screen reader support, the website becomes more visible in search engines at the same time. In other words, screen reader optimization makes the information easier to find for all users.

Sufficiently large buttons, clear contrasts and a simple user interface also make the service easier to use even if you don’t have special needs.

“Using consistent and semantic language in both the code and UI helps the blind, vision-impaired and digitally native equally”, says Qvik’s designer Jesse Ukkonen, whose job in the design team was to focus on vr.fi’s accessibility and user experience.

“Accessibility is ultimately pretty easy to achieve if you take it into account in the design process from the start, instead of trying to tack it onto the finished service at the end. This went especially well with the new vr.fi since VR was honing its new visual identity simultaneously with the website design and we could integrate accessibility support into all elements from the ground up”, says Ukkonen.

The practices learned from designing the ticket vending machines were used in the accessibility design of the website, which was also audited by accessibility experts. Qvik had a big role in designing the ticket vending machine and has also been involved with planning the renewal of vr.fi from the start. Qvik is also on the new site’s front-end and back-end developer teams.

Old habits die hard – as do old websites

Over the years, the old vr.fi had become a confusing and technologically rickety site using obsolete solutions like Flash. As with VR’s other digital services, the website revamp required a change of attitude from the whole organization.

“You can’t order a website like a locomotive: ‘one of these please’. Rather, you need deeper competence and understanding of development and design in your own organization too”, Lehtinen says.

“For us, the website revamp changed our in-house attitude to digital services. We learned how to manage the work and teams ourselves and clarified the roles of the services being developed. There was also a lot of trial and error involved.”

Building VR’s website and online store was a development-intensive project. This is not just a purchase funnel and website, but a sales system offering a new kind of service for which every ticket product has to be created individually. The tickets have connections to, for example the conductors’ devices and customer service, and every single connection needs to work.

“The front-end teams developing VR’s digital products cooperate to keep the integration with VR’s back-end systems as effortless as possible and to minimize the amount of technical debt”, says Ilkka Nyholm, our fellow Qvikie on the vr.fi front-end team.

“The goal is to make all functions built for the back-end system directly compatible with all digital services instead of, for example, having to create separate cancellation cover for mobile and web in the back-end.”

We are not wholly rid of the old website yet, as some ticket products still have to be purchased through the old purchase funnel. The new website is improved one step at a time in accordance with the principles of agile development, with connections to the old online store pared away as we go.

The new vr.fi website is the outcome of a well-functioning multivendor team. We want to give kudos to VR’s in-house experts and to our talented friends at Futurice, Luoto, Nordkapp and Netlight.

Related to this story

• New vr.fi site will provide inspiration for train travel
• VR’s ticket vending machine concept marries business needs with user expectations
• VR Ticket Vending Machine: The modern and easy way to get your train tickets

The post New vr.fi site finally out! Accessibility and clear content benefit everyone. appeared first on Qvik.

The European Accessibility Act was proposed in 2015 to ensure better future accessibility for digital services. The related directive was transposed into Finnish legislation in 2018 and has entered into force today, on Monday, 23 September 2019.

So, what does accessibility mean exactly? According to the Cambridge Dictionary:

accessibility

• the fact of being able to be reached or obtained easily
• the quality of being easy to understand

In the digital world, it refers to the usability of a service for everyone, including people with special needs due to sensory limitations, mental and physical disabilities, or injuries. Accessibility can help senior citizens and people with blindness, deafness, impaired motor function, developmental disorders, dyslexia or dated hardware.

The Act estimates that a staggering 80 million people in the European Union would benefit from, if not outright require, accessible digital services in their daily lives.

Put the “lit” in your accessibility

To recap, if your service is hit by the legislation, implementing accessibility is not optional. All services can benefit from accessibility, however. Google’s search algorithm ranks accessible websites higher and, without accessibility, you could potentially leave out a large portion of your user base. The estimates vary, but as much as 30–40% of people may benefit, if not outright require, accessible services.

• 20% of Finnish people are aged 65 or more
• 15% have hearing difficulties
• 10% have some form of dyslexia
• 8% of men have some level of color blindness
• 4% have visual impairments

The legislative requirements are very close to the AA class of the well-established WCAG 2.1 digital accessibility standard defined by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). In addition, a service affected by the Accessibility Act is expected to provide two things:

• an accessible feedback channel offering information on how the feedback will be used and with a designated contact person; and
• documentation on any parts of the service lacking accessibility, the reasons for these shortcomings, methods of getting alternative accessible services for those parts, a contact person and instructions on what to do if any answer to accessibility feedback or alternative service queries isn’t satisfactory.

The exact approach to improving accessibility differs based on the platform and whether the service is still in development or not. Accessibility is a layer, not a feature, so it should ideally be baked in from the very beginning and is typically more difficult to improve afterwards.

You gotta know it to own it

Whatever the case may be, implementation can only begin when designers and developers have the necessary knowledge and tools. Many validation tools are incredibly helpful by parsing through and explaining why some practices are problematic and how to fix various deficiencies.

Good examples are design helper Stark, React validator react-axe, Google’s Accessibility Scanner app for Android, and Chrome Dev Tools’ built-in website accessibility audit.

Validating accessibility at regular intervals is essential, and adding small-scale accessibility testing to the everyday development process will go a long way towards a long-term solution. It is good practice to have validation as a part of each story’s Definition of Done while doing Scrum. When working to improve an existing service’s accessibility despite prior neglect, validation is one of the first things to do in addition to training.

Does the Accessibility Act affect me?

The directive applies to public institutions and service providers, and even some from the private sector. To be precise, it affects:

• Public authorities
  • National and municipal bodies like ministries and schools
  • Universities and universities of applied sciences
  • Public organizations and institutions
• Some private sector entities
  • Public utilities or statutory services like insurance, car inspections and water, energy, investment and banking services
  • Organizations and companies funded by public authorities
  • Companies offering services for public authorities

The Accessibility Act will be enforced in phases. The first phase will start on Monday, 23 September, when websites published after 9/2018 are expected to be accessible. The second phase begins on 23 September 2020 and concerns all websites regardless of the go-live date. Mobile app publishers have it a little easier, as apps are not required to comply with the requirements until 23 June 2021.

With the changes related to PSD2 happening right now, the financial sector in particular is getting a slew of new legislation affecting businesses around Europe.

The EU directive doesn’t specify any sanctions, but national law gives public officials the authority to penalize negligence. It remains to be seen what the first cases might be, but they’re probably just around the corner. It’s best to not risk being the cautionary example and end up as the center of attention.

Conclusions

In 2019, accessibility is no longer a choice for digital services – it’s a mandatory layer to address. And for entities providing public services, the law gives an extra nudge.

Luckily, the information needed to improve accessibility is all there, and the tools offer great support. There are a bunch of people out there who are unable to use a big part of services, and being the first of the competition to give them a warm welcome will surely not only bring in profits, but also create positive change in the world.

If you’re interested in improving the accessibility of your digital services, we are more than happy to get you on the right track! Currently we are working on improving accessibility for instance with VR.

The post The new accessibility law is here! It will make digital services better for everyone. appeared first on Qvik.