Intruduction
Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) is a once-a-year day created to promote digital accessibility. This post will cover a short discussion explaining digital accessibility, the goal behind GAAD, and how a potentially interested party can participate. Before anything though, I want to point you to the Global Accessibility Awareness Day website. This is the main resource for information. This post on ScreenlessAllies attempts to be factual, but is also strongly opinionated.
What Is Digital Accessibility?
It would take a whole post, or posts, to cover this complex topic. Essentially, digital accessibility, or just accessibility, is the ability for a website, or generally digital content, to be used and accessed by the widest range of people possible. The term is commonly used to highlight those users with disabilities which include visual, cognitive, hearing, mobility, and other disabilities.
You might be asking, “Why is there only a single day dedicated to this important topic?” Good question!
By default, most companies, organizations, and anyone who runs and maintains a website has probably never had to consider how their content is of interest to people with disabilities. However, if the content is not accessible, the population of people with disabilities miss out. This brings about ethical dilemmas, legal issues, and I dare say, even a loss of business opportunity.
Anyway, I’ll probably write a longer post in the future covering this topic. For now, the important thing to know is that accessibility is important to everyone. This is why a day like this was created — to bring awareness to this important topic. A custom holiday if you will.
How Global Accessibility Awareness Day Started
According to the GAAD website’s about page, there was a single blog post that started it all. The post was written by an enthusiastic backend software developer who declared the start of GAAD.
There are some minor changes to the rules and dates of GAAD as of the original blog post, but the general sentiment holds true, “raise awareness and know-how on making sites accessible.”
when Is GAAD?
GAAD is known to take place on the third Thursday in May. You could argue that it should be held all days of the year, but then we would miss out on an opportunity to celebrate yet another holiday on the growing list of custom holidays!
Is GAAD For Me?
GAAD is for everyone! It is encouraged that awareness spreads throughout companies, to individuals, to organizations, to your parents, your grandparents, … Everyone is welcome! You can even use the #GAAD hashtag!
Online or In Person?
GAAD events can be held in all desired settings. If you want to schedule an official meetup, circumstances allowing, then do it. Want to schedule a webinar, feel free as well! Notify your friends, the accessibility community, and anyone you might think would benefit from your event.
What Do I Do For GAAD?
GAAD is what you make of it. The official website makes some recommendations, but you don’t have to follow those. The main goal is to promote digital accessibility.
Perhaps you should sit down with a screen reader. Download some magnification software. Download accessibility tools like AXE plugin for Chrome or even Lighthouse to analyze accessibility score of a website.
I mentioned events. GAAD commonly consists of events held by a number of people, or groups of people, that highlight different topics in accessibility. You can organize your own, or join others if allowed.
How Is ScreenlessAllies Participating?
We are a relatively new website. I feel we’re helping in the cause by providing these informative blog posts. If you visited this article, we’ve done our job. We want to promote accessibility as it relates to people who are blind. So while you’re hear, check out our other blog posts.
Conclusion
Global Accessibility Awareness Day is something I personally only heard about recently. It is a growing cause, and it holds value to us here at ScreenlessAllies. We hope you join us in promoting digital accessibility and participate by contributing to the digital world with this perspective in mind.