Hanna Karppi leads Nexer Digital's accessibility business in Sweden, helping expand the company's accessibility practice while advocating for digital inclusion across clients and industries. Originally from Finland, she studied political history, political science, and communications before building a career in change management and digital workplaces that eventually led her into accessibility. Hanna discusses why human-centered thinking is essential to technology, how internal advocates often drive organizational change, and why she is optimistic about AI, workplace inclusion, and the continued growth of accessibility across Europe.

Well, hello. I'm the host of the Digital Accessibility Podcast.

My name is Joe Welinske, and this program is about the people behind the

progress. And today I am pleased to be visiting with Hanna Karppi.

Hello, Hana. How are you doing today?

I'm good, thank you. How are you?

Yeah, very good. It's been a fairly dry, sunny, and warm

couple of weeks in Bellingham, Washington, where I live.

Where are you talking to us from?

I am in Stockholm, Sweden, and we haven't had super warm yet.

It's been quite warm, but now we're expecting the European

heat wave to come here in the weekend, so expecting that a lot of people

will be out and about and enjoying the summer.

Well, I've been there a few times.

It's a lovely place to visit.

And it's good to have you as an international guest for this

podcast. And always a good place to start is if you could tell us

a little bit about the work that you're doing right now.

So I work for Nexer, which is a Swedish tech IT consulting company,

but we have a global presence.

And we do basically work in all different areas of IT, but one of the

expertise areas that we have is accessibility.

And we have really long roots with that in the UK,

where we have a special kind of area and unit called Nexar Digital.

And now we decided to expand Nexar Digital here in Sweden last year.

So I'm running our business here in Sweden and running the team of

accessibility specialists. So that's my job.

So doing a bit of everything at the moment.

Well, I'm sure, yeah, doing a little bit of everything can sound like a lot.

What is it typically that the types of things that you'll be involved with

in a week or a month in your position?

In my position, I'm not involved in the practical accessibility work that much,

but then my team is.

And our team in the UK, of course, with everything from

designing things to developing to doing audits to training

strategies, guidelines, everything possible when it comes to

digital inclusion and human-centered IT.

But my regular work week is a lot about advocating for

digital inclusion and accessibility.

I go to events. I meet a lot of people, of course, meet a lot of

clients, potential clients. Of course, try to be the best possible manager to my

team and make sure that my team shines and be a good colleague to my colleagues,

doing a lot of trying to find out trends, reading about things, listening to

podcasts like your podcast, which is great, by the way.

And yeah, it's a lot about meeting people.

And I still, we think, still need to do a lot of advocating.

So I see that that's a big part of my role, not just to get clients,

but also for the bigger and more meaningful reasons behind

the reason why we do this work, so.

And you mentioned your clients.

For people that may not be familiar with your organization,

what type of work is Nexar involved with?

So Nexar clients are for the whole company, are everything from big

enterprises to smaller companies.

When it comes to kind of our area of work, we are very much into

in the UK, we work a lot, for example, with healthcare sector and education sector

charities. But then also here, retail.

That's a big emerging area now when we think of accessibility and inclusion.

So it is very varying organizations that we work with.

But I would say that if you are like most amazing stories probably

are from, for example, from healthcare sector, where you can actually

see that there's been a big impact and there are long roots in the

UK, especially with the work that we have done.

But I'd say it's very,

very, very varying when it comes to our clients.

Some of the clients are very well known also internationally.

I don't want to name-drop here, but if you think of some big Swedish companies,

some of them are our clients. Well, why don't we go back in time a bit

and tell us a little bit about how you found your way to what you're doing today,

maybe your lived life and the things that you've done in your work that brings

you to your current position?

So I have to first admit that I'm not an IT person, even if I work in

IT or yeah, well, everyone is an IT person because everything is IT.

But I come more of the human side.

So this was never actually my plan even to work with IT.

So I'm from Finland originally and got myself to

university to study political history, political science.

I'm specialized in American and Cold War history.

And I was sure that I was going to be a diplomat or work in

some governmental organization or something like that.

I also studied communications and then found myself working in a

big Swedish construction company at some point, doing a lot of

change management, change communications, and then slowly kind of moved myself

to IT and more digital things.

And what became quite where my IT passion then comes from is the

kind of the human side, since I am a humanist.

So I've always wanted to kind of explore

the users or us humans who use the IT.

I hope the IT won't use us.

I guess it does that also sometimes and more and more with AI.

But I mean, it's fascinating how little we

give the attention to humans,

even if we are humans also working in IT industry.

So I've kind of put a lot of

effort during my career or been passionate about looking into how we think

and how we would like to use the tools the best way and

how we should design them so that they are better for us.

So that's basically my IT path.

And then I worked a long time with digital workplaces.

So that's my original IT area, lots with

intranets and internal communications, different messaging tools,

and how people interact at work.

So yeah, the kind of

human-centered thinking there as well.

And I think that we put too little focus on also kind of the internal tools.

So then that's how I ended up in accessibility.

Then I kind of learned while kind of

studying how humans use the tools that there is also specific

needs, became more and more aware of those.

I'm definitely still not perfect today.

I want to learn and I want to be educated.

And I don't think anyone has to be perfect with

this as long as you keep your mind open.

But I think it's very, how would I say,

important topic and close to my heart.

And it's all about humans, not just accessibility, but usability and

making IT better for everyone.

So I'm very glad that I'm working now what I am working with.

Well, I have some experience.

I've done a lot of things where I work in a client relationship

where we're always working with different clients.

And ideally, we want our clients to invest in

accessibility in every project.

But in my experience and most of that being with organizations in the United

States, there's some companies that are ready for it

and they fully invested in accessibility and it's part of everything that they do.

But I've found that most organizations

have accessibility where they put it off and they find it as an easy thing where

they can say,"We'll work on it later."And they never get around to investing in it

in the way that they should. And I was just wondering what your perceptions

are of being a large agency in your area in terms of

how much clients are receptive to investing in accessibility?

I think it varies. I think definitely there should be more

investments, much more.

I don't think everyone always understands that if you invest in an early

phase and if you invest time and money, it will come back to you at some point

and you will save a lot of money if you don't just fix everything afterwards.

But then again, I've also seen really good examples of companies where

already accessibility is embedded in the strategies and kind of ways of working.

So it's always wonderful to see someone doing things right.

But I also believe that in many of these places where they actually do this, it is

normally some advocates inside that company.

It's fascinating to see when I talk to people that I might ask,"So how did you

start to work with accessibility in your company?"Well, it was me

and my other colleague. He was normally it's like a coder or someone from

development and someone from the business side.

And then both of them are excited about accessibility or then it's just one person.

And then they start to talk about it and try to spread

the word. And if they are persistent enough, they

get a small budget and then it starts to grow.

Because I think that when companies and organizations get into it,

they can actually see the benefits for everyone.

But they don't see it if they don't do anything.

But I think that that's why I said earlier as well that it's important with this

advocating still because that is also one way of having

these breakthroughs in a company. You would hope that it would happen

for other reasons, that it wouldn't have to be just that one or two people pushing

it through. But that's how it still seems to work quite a lot, at least here.

I don't know how it is in the US, but many companies I talk to,

it's the power of some very persistent,

bold people who start to talk about it.

And one of the things that is prominent in Europe,

mainly new in the European Union, was the

European Accessibility Act, which is

meant to be an extremely far-reaching and important piece of regulation.

It has been delayed for another year in terms of

compliance. But is that something that your team has to

learn about and be prepared for?

Yes. So normally when we do audit work, for example, we, of course, do it based on

European Accessibility Act as well.

And I was just in an event a couple of days ago

where we celebrated the one-year anniversary now.

It's coming soon, the 28th, if I remember correct.

So I think that there's been a lot of kind of

at least last year when the law came out, that many companies wanted to audit their

websites and there was quite a lot of fuss.

But now it seems to that companies have done the minimal,

at least, and then they may be waiting a bit.

I just had this conversation with one of the colleagues and

maybe there's a little bit like,"Okay, let's see what happens.

And will someone get fined?"I understood that in France, there's been some

fines already, but it hasn't happened here yet.

And what's going to happen if we don't do this?

So I think it hasn't fixed everything, but I still think it is a good

thing that we also get the legislation.

I hope that it will get harder and there will be sanctions and there will be also

more services that have to be compliant.

I'm hoping that someday it will also reach the

tools that we use at work, that it's not only external websites, but it's also

or external services, but it's also my

digital workplace tools because I think employee rights is also important.

So I have high hopes maybe, and I think we should be proud we have that

legislation in place. But has it magically fixed everything?

No, but I think it has at least brought more attention

to the matter. It's great to see how that was

put in. And as you mentioned, it'll take some time to see how the

regulatory compliance part of it actually works out.

Actually, I think I misspoke, but in the United States, we had some important

legislation and that had been delayed in terms of

enforcement by a year. And yeah, ideally, the compliance isn't

the element that is why people do accessibility.

But unfortunately, it's the reality that that is the type of thing that

ultimately makes all of our organizations decide that

it's time to build accessibility into their products and services.

And it works with other things too.

I don't think we had, for example, a GDPR big change happening in Europe

a few years ago. And I think that that's made companies more invested in

information security and things like that.

So it's not only accessibility.

Unfortunately, we people seem to need this kind of legal

framework as well. But I think that it's good to have in place because it will also

protect us if political climate changes or

whatever happens in Europe, that I think it's always good to have these in place.

But it definitely shouldn't be the ultimate reason to do

things that are better for everyone.

Well, as we finish up here, I just wanted to ask about the future, either

short-term or long-term for you and your organization.

Are there any things coming up, activities that you're excited about

or on the other side of it, maybe things that look to be challenging that

you're hoping are going to turn out well?

What's it look like to you in the coming years

for accessibility at your organization?

Oh, I wish I had a crystal ball.

As I say, I always want to be a little bit optimist.

So I'm hoping that kind of the positive trend continues, that people

are more and more interested in these topics.

I think there is also some kind of, how do you say,

forceful movement now when unfortunately, we have a political climate in the world

that doesn't encourage diversity and inclusion.

So I think that there are also companies and organizations who want to do things

differently and be different.

We're one of them. So I want to believe that there's opportunity to

help those organizations and not only with accessibility, but with the whole

inclusion thinking.

AI, of course, is going to be a challenge, but also

an opportunity for accessibility in many ways.

I have personally very I'm torn.

I'm a little bit scared of it, but at the same time, I also know that

there are positive sides. So we really have to invest more time and energy

in AI and accessibility. And then, like I said earlier, what I'm

hoping and what I can see a little bit as well is that

companies are also interested in workplace inclusion more.

So at least here in Sweden, I have had discussions

with organizations who want to make sure that their internal tools and also

information is accessible for everyone.

So hoping also that trend coming the

next years. But yeah, things move so fast that it's

sometimes hard to keep up.

But yeah, hoping it will be a positive trend.

Well, Hanna, it's been great to have this chance to speak with you and

learn about your path into accessibility.

So thanks so much for taking the time to do this with me.

Thank you. It's been super nice.

And yeah, as I said, your podcast is great.

So I hope I didn't ruin it by this one episode.

No, not at all. This has been a great addition.

So thank you very much. Thank you.

Bye-bye.