Annual Report 2025/Story: Developing a tool together with the target groups
In this story, we describe how our work with Wikispeech took important steps during the year towards making Wikipedia more accessible and useful to more people. Through closer collaboration with partner organisations, ongoing dialogue with target groups, qualitative testing, and strengthened expertise in accessibility-focused development, we have laid a stronger foundation for a tool that works in people's everyday lives.
Wikipedia is one of the world's most widely used knowledge resources. But for many people, there are still barriers that make its content difficult to access. For people with different kinds of disabilities, or others who have difficulty taking in written information, access to free knowledge is not always as self-evident as it is for others. That is why the work on Wikispeech is not only about developing new technology. It is also about creating a tool that works for people with different needs, circumstances, and ways of using knowledge. The goal is to make it easier for more people to use Wikipedia on their own terms.
For the tool to work in practice, its development must be based on the needs of the target groups. In 2025, an important part of the work was therefore to find forms of feedback and knowledge exchange that ensure that the experiences of the target groups genuinely influence how the product is designed. Find the right way of working too time. We needed not only to gather input, but also to create structures in which that feedback could be translated into concrete priorities and technical decisions.
The reference group has played an important role in this work. It consists of several different actors, including interest organisations representing different target groups, as well as actors with strong expertise in speech technology and accessibility work for people with disabilities. Since the start of the project, we have held several reference group meetings focused on inclusion, updates on the development of the project, future goals, and the renewal and strengthening of our joint efforts. These meetings have been important both for providing an overall picture of how the work is progressing and for creating a shared direction going forward.
During the second half of 2025, we adjusted our way of working in order to strengthen and deepen contact with our target groups and to involve them more closely in the technical decisions made within the project. This meant that representatives from the Aphasia Association, the Dyslexia Association, FUB, and the Swedish Agency for Accessible Media increasingly came to serve as active co-creators in the development process. Rather than mainly providing feedback afterwards, they were given a clearer role in influencing the development on an ongoing basis. This gave us better opportunities to understand which functions, interfaces, and ways of working are actually needed for the tool to be useful in everyday life.
The ongoing dialog provided valuable perspectives and guided our technical priorities. This made the work both more inclusive and more precise. The new way of working was appreciated not only by our target groups, but also by the project team at Wikimedia Sverige. For the development team, it meant that important choices could be discussed earlier in the process, and that development could be guided to a greater extent by usability rather than assumptions.
At the same time, the technical process was developed to give the target group a clearer role at every stage. During the year, a decision was made that the work going forward should be organised as an iterative cycle in which different functions and components are developed, tested, and improved step by step. The process begins with what is known as user story mapping. In this phase, the target group describes how the tools need to function in order to fit their needs, use cases, and everyday situations. Only after that do the developers move on to building solutions, which are then followed up through new check-ins with the target group. In this way, functions can be adjusted or reconsidered before the work has gone too far. This reduces the risk of spending time on things that in the end do not prove useful enough.
A particularly important part of the year was the qualitative testing carried out together with Begripsam. Once several components had reached a more mature stage, larger tests could be conducted with a mixed group of testers representing a range of disabilities. These tests resulted in reports that provided an overall picture of what worked well and what improvements were needed. They gave the developers a more concrete basis for the continued work and helped ensure that the user perspective gained an even clearer place in product development.
The work also showed that accessibility is not only about the end result, but about the entire process behind it. That is why it has been important to strengthen the developers' knowledge of accessible code and accessibility-oriented development. Through training provided by Begripsam, the team has gained better conditions for making technical decisions that make the tools more usable from the outset, rather than trying to correct problems afterwards.
During the year, we also developed a clearer plan for the next steps. This plan connects the technical development with the development of methods and materials, individual conversations with partners, and upcoming speech data collection events. For the tool to work well, we need not only to develop the technology. We also need to develop methods and materials that make it possible to use and further improve it together with the target groups. The first activities are therefore intended not only to contribute to the collection of speech data, but also to provide continued feedback on methods, materials, and tools.
The plan going forward is to continue this cycle with new rounds of user story mapping, further development of methods and materials, and more activities together with partners during the year. The goal is for the speech data collector to be completed in June 2026, followed by speech data collection events in the autumn. This means that the work is gradually moving towards a situation in which more people can use Wikipedia in ways that were previously not possible. It also means that more people can contribute to strengthening the resources on which the tool is built.
The work done throughout 2025 has therefore been crucial in creating better conditions for a tool that works in practice. By listening earlier, testing more systematically, and building closer collaboration with those who best understand the needs of the target groups, we have laid a stronger foundation for enabling more people to use Wikipedia.
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