T3CON24 Recap - Digital Accessibility: From Compliance to Business Value
Introduction
At T3CON 2024, accessibility experts gave a compelling presentation about the critical importance of digital accessibility and its implementation. The session, titled “AX - Accessible Experience,” brought together Claudio Zeni and Stefan Barac to share insights about making digital spaces truly accessible for everyone, going beyond mere compliance to create genuine business value.
About the Speakers
Claudio Zeni
Incluton
From the point Claudio Zeni understood how much technology could help him as a person born blind, he began immersing himself in electronic devices and computers. After completing an education in software development, Claudio now works at a government office, where he handles incoming support requests by mail and phone.
Stefan Barac
strategica11y
Stefan Barac has been focusing on accessibility and sustainability for 15 years. Even during his studies, he was concerned with the purpose and added value of accessible solutions. As a strategic consultant, Stefan Barac has been helping companies to set goals in the area of accessibility since 2024.
Their Collaborative Work: Incluthon
Together, Zeni and Barac are part of Incluthon, an initiative that aims to:
- Integrate people with disabilities into product and service teams
- Provide accessibility consulting to companies and government agencies
- Conduct workshops and training sessions
- Raise awareness about digital accessibility
The speakers' complementary experiences - Zeni with visual impairment and Barac with cognitive challenges - allow them to address accessibility from multiple perspectives, making their presentations and consulting work particularly comprehensive and practical.
They’ve worked together on various projects, including developing solutions for seat reservation systems that work for visually impaired users.
Their presentation style reflects their different backgrounds but shared mission. While Barac focused on the business case and strategic implementation of accessibility, Zeni provided technical demonstrations showing exactly how assistive technologies interact with digital content. This combination of strategic overview and practical demonstration made their presentation particularly effective in showing both why accessibility matters and how to implement it properly.
The Economic Impact of Inaccessibility
Inaccessibility limits businesses from reaching over a billion people with disabilities. The World Bank highlights the economic potential of accessibility, while Forrester's ROI studies show it boosts revenue and mitigates risks, proving it’s both ethical and profitable.
Barac provided a striking economic example from Switzerland: "If a company made a profit of one million francs, it could have made at least 1,120,000. But if we consider the full potential—if services were actually improved so that more users genuinely wanted to use them—then the profit could be much higher than 1.5 times that amount."
Demographic Analysis
The speakers presented detailed statistics about affected populations:
- 8-10% of men have some form of color blindness
- Temporary disabilities affect younger populations through:
- Medication effects
- Sleep deprivation
- Injuries
- Situational limitations (like holding a child)
Building Accessible Digital Experiences: Key Technical Considerations
Document Accessibility
Zeni demonstrated common accessibility failures in document handling, particularly with PDFs. He showed how a scanned document appears to screen readers:
"When you scan a document, the screen reader tells us 'Goods: empty page.' Even though we can all see text here, it's actually an image, not readable text. This is how millions of documents exist in the world today."
This impacts educational institutions particularly hard:
"A blind student needs a person or organization behind them constantly converting documents, books, teaching materials into the right format. This creates enormous personnel and financial pressure."
Structured Content Best Practices
The presentation included specific technical requirements for creating accessible documents:
- Heading Structure
"Headings are crucial, a central point in accessibility because they facilitate navigation," explained Zeni. He demonstrated how proper heading structure allows users to navigate through content using keyboard commands.
- Table Implementation
The speakers emphasized using standard HTML table elements rather than visual approximations:
- Avoid using tab stops to create table-like layouts
- Implement proper table headers and cell relationships
- Ensure keyboard navigation between cells
- Keyboard Navigation
Many users rely on keyboard accessibility, often with alternative input devices. Zeni explained how different assistive technologies enable navigation:
"People with disabilities work with the keyboard. And not just blind and visually impaired people, but also people who cannot move their hands. They might use different keyboards, like a mouth mouse or mouth stick, which they hold in their mouth and control the cursor through head movements."
Technical Testing Guidelines
Accessibility testing requires structured and thorough evaluation to ensure a seamless user experience. The speakers provided specific criteria for accessibility testing:
- Screen Reader Compatibility
- Test with multiple screen readers (VoiceOver, TalkBack, NVDA)
- Verify all content is properly announced
- Check for proper semantic structure
- Keyboard Navigation Requirements
- All interactive elements must be focusable
- Logical tab order
- Visible focus indicators
- No keyboard traps
- Color and Contrast
- Minimum contrast ratios for text and interactive elements
- Don't rely solely on color to convey information
Implementation Strategy
Integration into Development Workflow
Beyond testing, accessibility must be embedded in the development process from the start. Barac stressed the need for a mindset shift:
“Accessibility is not a UX topic. Don't just push it to some designer and say 'Hey, you there, you're in charge now.' Or, ‘You there, content manager, developer, you're responsible for this now.’ It's not a checklist topic.”
Practical Solutions for Common Scenarios
Real-world challenges illustrate why accessibility needs to be considered at every stage. Barac shared a fascinating real-world example about seat reservation systems:
“What do you think happens when people with visual impairments want to reserve a seat? There is currently no solution in Europe of a tabular nature... Now you hover over the visual representation with the mouse and fly over the seat. People who cannot see or who have difficulty seeing will not be able to do this.”
Testing and Validation
Ensuring accessibility goes beyond automated tools—it requires direct user feedback. The presentation emphasized the importance of functional testing with actual users:
"The only way to validate and verify that you are actually accessible is through functional testing. This means not pretending to be people with disabilities, but having people with disabilities actually test your website or services."–Stefan Barac
Technical Resources and Tools
To help organizations implement accessibility effectively, the speakers highlighted several essential tools and guidelines:
- Automated Testing Tools
- Screen reader compatibility checkers
- Contrast analyzers
- Keyboard navigation testers
- Document Structure Tools
- Heading structure analyzers
- PDF accessibility checkers
- Table structure validators
- Development Guidelines
- WCAG 2.1 AA compliance checklist
- Semantic HTML best practices
- ARIA implementation guides
Future Considerations
As technology evolves, so do the opportunities and challenges in accessibility. The speakers explored how emerging trends, such as AI-driven tools and new assistive technologies, are reshaping the digital experience for users with disabilities. However, they also stressed the importance of being proactive rather than reactive in meeting accessibility standards.
As Barac noted: "This is the cheapest area where you can really make innovation. Yes, you can invest in AI. That's good too, but very expensive in comparison. Sometimes AI helps with accessibility, but that's another story."
Zeni and Barac’s presentation at T3CON 2024 underscored that accessibility is a fundamental aspect of digital inclusion, business success, and innovation. By integrating accessibility into design, development, and testing workflows, organizations can create digital experiences that serve everyone, regardless of ability. The real takeaway? Accessibility is an ongoing process, not a one-time fix. Investing in inclusive design not only benefits users with disabilities but also improves usability for all, enhances brand reputation, and opens new market opportunities. The challenge now is for businesses and developers to take these insights and turn them into action—because a truly accessible digital world benefits everyone.
Did you enjoy this recap? If you would like to relive all the exciting moments from T3CON24, be sure to check our our recap of the entire conference!
