What is Digital Accessibility?
Every user deserves a first-rate digital experience on the web. Someone with a disability must be able to experience web-based services, content and other digital products with the same successful outcome as those without disabilities. This awareness and commitment to inclusion is the goal of Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD), a global event that shines a light on digital access and inclusion for people with disabilities.
The GAAD Foundation
The GAAD Foundation was launched in 2021 to mark GAAD’s 10th anniversary. Its mission is to disrupt the culture of technology and digital product development to include accessibility as a core requirement.
Participate Directly
Karen Mardahl in Denmark has suggested the following additional ideas for designers, developers, and others to take on as part of the day. These will help directly to improving the accessibility of the web and to spreading awareness.
Caption a video – at least prepare a transcript. If it is not your video, send the transcript to the owner and suggest that they follow the information provided by Google for YouTube or 3Play Media for Vimeo to add captions.
Write a blog post on what digital accessibility awareness is and what your (the writer’s) ideas are for raising that awareness.
Create a video demonstrating how you use some type of assistive technology and upload it to YouTube.
There are a number of free tools that can help designers and developers to test the accessibility of their pages. One of these is WAVE – Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool from the folks at WebAIM. Run this WAVE – Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool on a page or pages you have developed and see how accessible these are to your visitors, including those with different disabilities. Take the results and implement the suggested changes.
Additionally
Add new comment