axes4 Day 2026: Trends, Highlights & a Look Behind the Scenes

Every single talk would have deserved its own paragraph, but we can't possibly do justice to all 18 speakers here. So we've put together a selection that shows just how diverse the program was.

The axes4 Day was opened by Prof. Dr. Erdmuthe Meyer zu Bexten, a computer scientist, professor at TH Mittelhessen, and since 2018 the honorary commissioner of the Hessian state government for accessible IT. As head of the State Competence Center for Accessible IT (LBIT) and the enforcement and monitoring body, she knows the gap between legal mandates and lived practice firsthand. In her talk, she shared insights from over 30 years of the state of Hesse's commitment to digital inclusion — from structures and strategies to enforcement and monitoring, all the way to market surveillance under the BFSG. An honest field report that showed how far the road to comprehensive accessibility still is, and how important it is to keep walking it.

Dorothea Hayh from adesso put into words what many know from their daily work: there is often a wide gap between the ideal workflow for accessible documents and corporate reality. Unclear responsibilities, lengthy approval cycles, and scarce resources slow down progress. As an Accessibility Consultant, she shared hands-on insights from the consulting work of adesso's Accessibility Consulting team and presented concrete processes and solutions that help organizations successfully bridge these challenges.

Achim Schuch, Country Manager DACH at Dialog Group, used a large-scale project at a leading German mobile provider to illustrate what accessibility means in practice for high-volume customer communications. The focus was on semantic document structures, hybrid formats like ZUGFeRD, and the realization that accessible documents don't just fulfill a compliance requirement — they also form the foundation for reliable machine processing. Those who structure their documents properly benefit across the board.

Klaas Posselt from einmanncombo took on the ultimate challenge of document accessibility: accessible PDF forms. Complex tag structures, a lack of practical tools, and many open questions hold back even experienced professionals. Klaas showed how these challenges can be solved efficiently with axesWord — from clean semantics and proper structure to time-saving tools. The goal: creating accessible PDF forms just as quickly as accessible PDF documents. If you know Klaas, you know: edutainment at its best.

From the axes4 team, there were two highlights: Patrick Foster, lead developer of PAC, presented an exclusive preview of PAC 2027 ‒ running on Mac for the first time, with a completely redesigned, accessible user interface. And Tamás Nemes and Thomas Schempp showed straight from the axes4 lab how AI and PDF/UA reinforce each other: with Document Intelligence, RAG, and vector databases, accessible documents deliver significantly better results for search and analysis.

New this year were two Ask-the-Expert live sessions running parallel to the talks. Direct exchange and individual questions, with no stage in between. Stay tuned for what's coming next year.

What attendees experience as a seamless event on Thursday morning starts for us days in advance. We were already in Berlin on Monday, March 23, getting everything ready. The weeks before were intense: hundreds of details that need to be right, constant coordination, checklists upon checklists. There's no sugarcoating it — it was stressful. But when attendees streamed into the Umweltforum on Thursday morning and everything ran smoothly, both on-site and on the livestream, the detailed planning paid off. Every single detail.

Because axes4 Day is a team effort, from the first idea to the final teardown. You sometimes forget that when you only see the finished event, but behind it is a collective achievement of the entire team, without which this day wouldn't be possible.

The evening before, we met for the Speakers Dinner: 18 speakers, sponsors, and our team — relaxed atmosphere, great food, even better conversations. When you see how very different people come together in one evening to form a group united by a shared topic, you know why all the effort is worth it.

The feedback on LinkedIn after the event truly made our day: so many voices highlighting the special atmosphere above all else.

Because axes4 Day isn't just a conference about document accessibility. It's above all a day for and with this incredible community. People who meet here once a year and spend the rest of the year working within their organizations to make accessibility more than a checkbox. Who share their knowledge instead of keeping it to themselves. Who understand that this topic can only move forward together.

Once you've been to axes4 Day, you come back ‒ and bring colleagues next time. That's exactly how a community grows!

The real challenge is no longer the individual document, but scaling mass documents. Invoices, notices, policies ‒ thousands or millions of them, accessible, without losing quality. The path leads through template-based approaches and automation: axesWord for creating accessible individual documents, axesFlip for automated processing of large volumes.

AI was a theme running through several talks of the day: Where does AI deliver real value for PDF accessibility, where are its limits, and why do AI systems themselves benefit from accessible documents? Tamás Nemes and Thomas Schempp demonstrated it impressively in their talk: AI and PDF/UA are not opposites ‒ they reinforce each other. Accessible documents deliver exactly the semantic structure that AI systems need to truly understand, search, and analyze content.

With the European Accessibility Act (EAA), which took effect on June 28, 2025, and the German Accessibility Strengthening Act (BFSG), the topic has taken on a new urgency. Prof. Dr. Erdmuthe Meyer zu Bexten shared insights in her opening talk on the practical side of enforcement and market surveillance, making it clear: regulation is no longer theoretical. Those who still haven't taken action risk not only fines, but also reputational damage.

And things are moving on forms as well: accessible PDF forms are complex, but indispensable. Klaas Posselt gave a first taste at axes4 Day of how this challenge can be solved efficiently with axesWord in the future. Stay tuned!

axes4 Day 2026 once again showed why it is the event for everyone working with accessible documents. Strong on expertise, special on a human level, and a little bigger every year. Thank you to everyone who was part of axes4 Day ‒ on-site and online.

Save the date: We look forward to the next axes4 Day on April 8, 2027, once again at the Umweltforum in Berlin! Until then: stay with it, stay curious, and make documents accessible.