Year-End Review: AI and Accessibility - Florian Fieber

In this episode, I talk with Florian Fieber about what 2025 taught testers and how to get ready for 2026. AI boosts productivity, it does not replace us. The sweet spot is generation of artifacts like test ideas, cases, scripts, and data. Accessibility grew due to the EU AI act, yet many underestimate the work. A plugin is not enough. You need manual checks and early design. For 2026 we expect agentic AI and a pilot role for testers. AI literacy becomes company wide.

"This year was between dystopia and utopia." - Florian Fieber

Florian Fieber is a senior consultant, product strategist, and recognized expert in software quality assurance with more than 20 years of experience in the field. His work at TestSolutions focuses on test strategy, test process assessment and improvement, and the design of scalable QA operating models across the entire software lifecycle. He is responsible for strategic product management and portfolio development for testing services, as well as for internal upskilling and knowledge management in software testing.

With a background in media informatics and information systems, Florian started his career as a software developer and research assistant before moving into quality assurance. He has co-founded several consulting and training companies and has supported organizations across industries in establishing effective and sustainable testing practices. Since 2022, he has served as President of the German Testing Board, contributing actively to the advancement of professional standards and education in software testing.

Highlights:

• AI tools accelerate testing work as a productivity booster, but they require experienced testers who know which problem they are solving, not a replacement for human judgment.
• Agentic AI will shift the tester's role toward orchestration: the tester acts as the pilot directing AI agents, not as a co-pilot executing tasks handed down by automation.
• Companies routinely underestimate the effort required for comprehensive accessibility testing, because only a portion of checks can be automated and manual testing remains essential.
• The EU AI Act's Article 4 demands AI literacy from all employees, making competent and risk-aware use of AI tools a baseline requirement across entire organizations, not just for specialists.
• Testing of AI systems is not simply traditional testing applied to a new object: non-deterministic behavior requires different quality assessment approaches, and the higher the risk domain, the more critical rigorous validation becomes.

📌 Testing is a people business, humanity as a superpower. That is my talk on October 7 at HUSTEF 2026 in Budapest: See programme and tickets