Saavuta 2025

The tenth Saavuta seminar took place on Tuesday. I got to attend the event once again live. It's just so nice to get to see like-minded people who all want to make the world more accessible. This is Finland's largest event, and I'm super happy I've been able to attend it several times now.

I was able to spend the day with friends, and I also met some new people.

The talks were inspiring and wonderful

Teemu Vidgrén talked to us about technology belonging to us all. And I couldn't agree more.

After Teemu, we had President Tarja Halonen on stage to talk about digitalisation needing humanity alongside it. This is the closest I've ever been to a president. The talk was both funny and motivating. I'm happy I got to experience it live.

Before lunch, we got to hear the latest from the supervisory authority by Sanna Sinisalo and Juha Suomalainen. Sanna told us about what is happening at Traficom, and then Juha shared some findings from their accessibility monitoring. One thing they mentioned was that the accessibility statements are not updated enough. They also reminded that the accessibility statements are for the end user.

After lunch, Outi Arbelius told us about services to support systematic accessibility work. I hope the services help to improve accessibility.

Then we heard from TACCU (Tampere Accessibility Unit) from Pauliina Baltzar and Maija Hirvonen. We heard about what the students have been up to, and we heard about research.

Then we heard about the city of Helsinki's project in systematic accessibility work from Nina Hiukkanen and Tero Pesonen. It's always so nice to hear about accessibility successes and see people who actually care and understand why accessibility is important.

After a quick coffee break, we had Niina Majaniemi talk to us about accessibility and empathy. We got to hear several examples and results that show that empathy helps improve business.

The last talk was from Kristiina Kujala, who talked to us about getting accessibility to the agenda of the company leadership. A human-centred approach should be on the agenda of companies to make accessibility a strategic competitive edge. Couldn't agree more. Kristiina also mentioned that the human-centred approach and accessibility also improve the well-being of the employees.

The event ended with a wonderful musical number.

The workshops were online this year

I was prepared to watch a workshop at the event, but the organisers recommended that we don't, but instead focus on networking. Fortunately, the workshops were recorded! So we get to watch them all once the recordings are available.

I loved to learn this and focused fully on the live event! And of course, I do love that we get the recordings of the talks as well because I definitely want to rewatch a couple of them.