Accessibility testing took centre stage this week at the QA Financial Healthcare and Insurance Forum London, where industry leaders are meeting to address regulatory change, AI-driven tooling and the growing demand for inclusive digital services.
Following his session, Alex Jacobs, Head of Test Practice at Gallagher, spoke to QA Financial about why accessibility is becoming one of the defining responsibilities for QA teams, and why real progress depends on more than regulation or automation.
“It’s a really interesting subject and it’s one that I think is going to be at the core of the session we have at the conference,” Jacobs said, emphasising the combined impact of the European Accessibility Act and new FCA guidance.
“It is a challenge… legislation, regulation, things like that, they do give us a bit of an ability to sort of lean on and say, hey, look, this is something we need to do here.”
Yet compliance alone won’t shift organisational behaviour. “We sort of instinctively know that this is a good thing to do,” he said.
“There’s the ethical and moral reasons for making things more accessible. But those alone don’t normally necessarily get change in an organization.”
Consumer expectations, he added, are already pushing firms further: “They consume things in different ways… making these things accessible makes them better for everyone to use anyway.”
With AI dominating industry conversation, Jacobs set out a pragmatic view of its role in accessibility. “AI is everywhere at the moment, right? It’s in every conversation,” he said. “I like us to try and automate everything that makes sense, but that’s always with a view to freeing up more of our time to add more quality to our products.”
AI’s biggest contribution, he argued, will be interpretation rather than discovery. “Having something that can not just say there’s a problem, but use some of that Gen AI capability to help explain what that problem is in human terms… that’s where I think the latest wave of AI agents is really going to show the benefit.”
Why human judgement still matters
Despite advances in tooling, Jacobs stressed that accessibility remains fundamentally human-centred. “At the end of the day, you know, making systems accessible to people of different needs is at its core a human problem,” he said.
“It’s testing with personas… and working alongside people to make sure we’ve really got this right.”
“We automate so that we can spend more of our human experience making the quality of everything better,” he added.
On proving value to senior leaders, Jacobs acknowledged the difficulty. “It’s tough on that side of things, it is definitely tough,” he said.
“You can lean on reputation a bit, but I think finding a few success stories, finding something that’s a personal touch… that’s going to make organizations move.”
He noted research highlighting the size of the untapped market: “You’ve got a one fifth of your potential market you’re not targeting right now by not making your systems and your sites accessible.”
Why not become a QA Financial subscriber?
It’s entirely FREE
* Receive our weekly newsletter every Wednesday * Get priority invitations to our Forum events *
REGULATION & COMPLIANCE
Looking for more news on regulations and compliance requirements driving developments in software quality engineering at financial firms? Visit our dedicated Regulation & Compliance page here.
READ MORE
- Inside JPMorgan’s $18bn QA push with OmniAI reshaping testing
- As AI takes hold, insurance firms face a new testing mandate
- K2view’s Amitai Richman calls out the ‘real bottleneck’ in healthcare and insurance
- AI in QA: how flexible testing is redefining assurance for financial firms
- Explainer: Why site reliability engineering is gaining momentum in banking
WATCH NOW
