Celebrate the 11th Global Accessibility Awareness Day
Attend events or participate in activities to celebrate and create awareness
This Thursday, 19 May 2022, the 11th annual Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) brings together events to shine a light on digital access and inclusion for people with disabilities.
According to the GAAD Foundation, over 1 billion people have disabilities or impairments, including visual, auditory, physical and cognitive impairments. Digital accessibility and inclusive design can provide them equal opportunity to participate in the digital society. Small changes in design can help widen the audience for a given digital service immensely, benefiting both the user and provider.
For example, people with a visual impairment need alternative text descriptions for meaningful images and use the keyboard instead of a mouse to interact. People with hearing impairments need captioning for videos and visual indicators instead of audio cues. People with motor impairments may need alternative keyboards or other adaptive hardware to help them type and navigate on their devices. Other things such as an uncluttered screen, consistent navigation and the use of plain language can increase the accessibility for people – changes that benefit all users, not just those with disabilities.
To get everyone talking, thinking and learning about digital access and inclusion, there are events around the globe that you can attend. The full list of events is available here or you can also submit your own event.
For more upcoming events check our event calendar.
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