It’s amazing to see the idea evolved from a11y pros Jennison and Joe is raising a great momentum and this year, Global Accessibility Awareness Day will be marked on 19th May, 2016. to mark calendars for every year, note that Global Accessibility Awareness Day has been set to mark on every 3rd Thursday of May every year.
Nice thing about GAAD is that it’s an event that can be celebrated at any scale; may it be small – something like talk about accessibility to your peer; may it be hug – organize a summit or event! Everything will be counted but do remember to socialize about whatever you do.
Background about GAAD
The idea of a Global Accessibility Awareness Day started with a single blog post written by a Los Angeles-based web developer, Joe Devon. Jennison Asuncion, an accessibility professional from Toronto discovered Joe’s blog post purely by accident thanks to Twitter. After reading it, he immediately contacted Joe and they joined forces, leveraging their extensive and respective networks to realize the event.
Watch this interview of GAAD co-founder, Jennison Asuncion, by Dr. Jonathan Hassell in the year 2013.
Starting in 2015, rather than using a fixed date, we invite you to help us mark GAAD on the third Thursday of May.
Activity ideas
Some of the activities one could conduct without spending too much money are:
- Go mouseless Pick any website of users choice or something that they use on daily basis; let them experience using the website by using keyboard alone. A couple of interesting tasks could be Post a status on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, Uploading photos to Google Photos or Flickr
- Go keyboardless Invoke On Screen keyboard in Windows (available for Mac as well) and use your favorite application without using physical keyboard
- Use a screen reader – Install NVDA Screen reader on Windows or Press CTRL+F5 on OS X (this will turn ON VoiceOver); turn off your screen and explore your favorite application; may be try booking for a travel! If you prefer to use your mobile device Turn ON VoiceOver on iOS devices by going to Settings -> General -> Accessibility -> VoiceOver and Turn ON. For Android, Go to Settings -> Accessibility -> TalkBack -> Turn ON. Trip: Single tap will help you navigate and double tab will help you activate
- Test your website using either WAVE by WebAIM or aXe by Deque
- Demo Screen reader / screen magnifier to your peers
- Explore Cool resources from AssisTech
If you are marking Global Accessibility Awareness Day, do post a comment here so that we will cover your event or experience in an article that we post after May 19. Also do send an email to globala11yday (at) gmail (dot) com so that information will be posted on to the Global Accessibility Awareness Day’s website.
Watch this site for some cool stuff to mark Global Accessibility Day!
Do your bit to raise awareness!
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