Merry Christmas! As the year draws to a close, we thought it was time to look ahead to 2025.
The new year brings with it new regulations to better address challenges such as AI, accessibility and sustainability. These challenges exist independently of EU legislation and need to be considered from the perspective of those affected.
The European AI Act, for example, calls for more transparency about AI risks. From the perspective of AI users and creative content creators, this is exactly the right thing to do. The European Accessibility Act calls for more social responsibility towards people with disabilities. Again, from the perspective of people with disabilities, this is exactly right. These challenges exist independently of EU legislation and need to be addressed – even if the EU does not put them on paper and demand them.
If we could ask for one thing for Christmas, it would be for companies to see the real problems as an incentive to invest, rather than the regulations.
We should more often look at problems from the perspective of those affected rather than from our own. Our own view is usually distorted, or has even fallen victim to our own corporate blindness. So for us, the coming year is all about empathy! We want to engage more with users with disabilities, integrate their perspectives into our processes, and discover new design options as a result.
We have collected our UX research and made it centrally available to the UX community using AI. It is now possible to continuously integrate AI-powered “accessibility personas” into the design process on behalf of people with disabilities – not a replacement for real human-centered user research, of course, but a valuable tool to continuously validate product development.
You can also look forward to our new podcast “2025: Odyssey Accessibility”, in which Centigrade CEO Thomas Immich had a (healing) borderline experience or two and tried to look through the eyes of those affected. Maybe you will use the time between the holidays to take a look. We would appreciate it!
On this note, Centigrade wishes you a merry Christmas and a successful New Year 2025.
