Tom Gehring From Eye-Able: A Digital World Without Barriers

Tom, with “Eye-Able” you have dedicated yourselves to digital accessibility. Why is this topic so close to your heart?

Tom Gehring: Accessibility in everyday life is a topic that is discussed a lot, but many people don't even know about online accessibility. We want to draw attention to this topic because: Our world is becoming more and more digital, more and more is taking place in the digital space and it is extremely important that people with disabilities can be a part of it. We want to give these people the chance to live an everyday life like we do.

The Assist tool from Eye-Able helps to adapt the website to individual needs

How exactly did the idea for your company come about?

Tom: There is a personal story behind the founding of Eye-Able: our founder Oliver Greiner has a friend, Lennart, who has a genetic visual impairment. Oliver helped him to read from the blackboard when he was still at school. During his studies, however, it became increasingly difficult for Lennart to keep up - mainly because the university's learning management system was not barrier-free. He had to drop out of his studies. Oliver then decided to do something about this lack of inclusion. He went into research and, in collaboration with the Institute for the Blind in Würzburg, developed an assistant tool on which all the tools we offer at Eye-Able today are based.

What exactly does digital accessibility mean?

Tom: Basically, it's about ensuring that people with disabilities - such as visual impairments or restricted mobility – can navigate a website and make it accessible to them. For example, it is important to pay attention to contrasts and the correct use of colors. It is also relevant that images and links are always provided with alternative texts, because otherwise a blind person with screen reader technology cannot understand what is happening in the image or where the link leads to.

What is your focus? How exactly do you support companies in becoming accessible online?

Tom: Firstly, we have developed an assist tool that appears on our customers' websites and helps end users to adapt the website to their own needs. In addition to contrast settings, this includes the ability to adjust the font size, a read-aloud function and many other helpful settings, but that doesn't make the website barrier-free in itself. To achieve this, you have to adapt the website code - it has to have the right structure. We have developed a checking technology that checks the code, searches for errors and analyzes them. This technology allows us to see directly where the error is in the code. We use an AI to suggest an automatically generated solution, which we can then copy and paste – problem solved.

That sounds relatively simple. To what extent does AI help you with your task, apart from the automatically generated solution suggestions?

Tom: AI plays a very important role for us and we use it on various levels. For example, we have developed a language tool that can convert a text into simple language in a matter of seconds. It works like this: We integrate a button on our client's website that users can click at any time. This immediately rewrites the text on the respective page – into shorter paragraphs with simple main sentences that reflect the most important points of the content.

Who exactly are your customers?

Tom: We work with companies, online stores and sports clubs, for example. One of our clients is FC St. Pauli. It's a huge club and naturally a prestigious customer for us. But more importantly, St. Pauli has been doing a lot for inclusion and equality for many years. We have checked the club's website for accessibility and corrected errors. Today, St. Pauli uses our Eye-Able Assist, which supports website visitors at the touch of a button.

In June, the Accessibility Reinforcement Act comes into force in Germany. How high is the awareness of digital accessibility in society? How will it change as a result of the law?

Tom: There is still a lot of room for improvement. It's difficult to estimate how many people are really engaged with the law, but I think it's a step in the right direction. I suspect that something will only change in our society after the law has come into force and the first warnings have been issued. There is an interesting case in Spain: a Spanish airline was issued a warning and had to pay a fine of 90,000 euros. The sum would probably not have been that bad for the company, but the newspapers reported on the warning – the representative damage for the airline was immense.

What should companies pay particular attention to now if they want to make their website accessible?

Tom: We are currently in a hot phase just before the law comes into force. On the one hand, we as a company, because the market is huge and this represents a huge opportunity for us. But also the companies that now have to convert or redesign their websites. For them, there is a risk that they will end up with questionable service providers who promise them support but are not really any help. They could sell their own tool as an apparent solution, although in reality it does not make the websites more accessible. For internet users with disabilities, this would of course be extremely unfortunate.

Many people are afraid that they will now have to choose between design and accessibility. Does one exclude the other?

Tom: No, we and the legislators are aware that some corporate branding has been around for over 100 years and cannot be changed so easily. Nevertheless, some designs are not legally compliant, for example because the contrasts are not right. But there are solutions for this, for example an assist tool that displays the entire website in contrast mode at the touch of a button. For everyone else, the homepage looks the same, but people with visual impairments can now recognize the components much better.

What is your vision for the next few years? How should the digital world ideally develop?

Tom: Ideally, it would be 100 percent barrier-free in a few years' time. However, as the digital world is changing so quickly, this is of course impossible. However, we want to ensure that people's understanding of the need for digital accessibility grows. And that as many websites as possible are inclusive and accessible for the whole of society. For us as a company, we want to continue to expand and grow. Eye-Able was founded five years ago and we now have around 150 employees in several European countries such as Italy, Poland, Spain  and the Netherlands. We also already have a number of intercontinental customers and are expanding rapidly and continuously. We dream big and believe in our vision.