On Global Accessibility Awareness Day, 15 May, we hosted the 10th edition of the Öffentliches Gestalten meetup. As a fitting topic, we discussed ‘accessible for everyone’ and 2 talks with 3 speakers.
The event was hosted at the DigitalService office in Berlin-Kreuzberg. Some 45 people attended the meetup in person.
The event description said the following:
Public sector services need to work for everyone. Unlike private sector businesses, public organisations cannot exclude anyone or focus on a narrow user group. German accessibility law, the Basic Law – also known as Grundgesetz – and EU legislation demand this.
Various public sector organisations have been building significant capacity and capability in-house. In our May meetup, we want to hear from representatives of several public sector organisations about their efforts to design and develop the most inclusive products and services.”
The first speaker was Danny Koppenhagen. He is a Web Development Expert at Deutsche Bahn’s DB Systel. Danny shared his work on guiding sightless journeys, explaining how DB Wegbegleitung assists visually impaired travellers to stops.
In a second talk. Marion Couesnon and Susanne Henatschel talked about ‘accessibility in practice’. Marion is an accessibility designer, and Susanne is a content designer at the German government’s Digital Service. They shared their work on civil court claims and understandable language, showing how they transformed legal language into citizen-friendly language.
After each talk, there was plenty of time for questions from the audience. There were many questions for all the speakers.
The meetup also included the premier of Digital Service’s accessiblity empathy and test lab.
Curious attendees engaged with the setup and tested the presented tools.