Global Accessibility Awareness Day

The Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAAD) is commemorated every year on the third Thursday of May.

The purpose of GAAD is to get everyone talking, thinking and learning about digital (web, software, mobile, etc.) access/inclusion and the more than One Billion people with different disabilities/impairments.

Digital Accessibility

From both a civil rights and a business perspective, people with disabilities are underserved by today’s digital products. 1 Billion People Worldwide Have Disabilities. 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.

In 2020, WebAIM analyzed one million home pages for accessibility issues and found the following:

• 98.1% Home Pages With At Least One WCAG 2.0 Failure
• 60.9 Average Number of Errors Per Home Page

Causes of Most Common Accessibility Failures (% of Home Pages)

• Low Contrast Text - 86.3%
• Missing Image Alt Text - 66%
• Empty Links - 59.9%
• Missing Form Input Labels - 53.8%
• Empty Buttons - 28.7%
• Missing Document Language - 28%

Common disabilities and their needs

• Visual - People who are blind need alternative text descriptions for meaningful images and use the keyboard and not a mouse to interact with interactive elements.
• Hearing - People who are deaf or hard of hearing will need captioning for video presentations and visual indicators in place of audio cues.
• Motor - People with motor impairments may need alternative keyboards, eye control or some other adaptive hardware to help them type and navigate on their devices.
• Cognitive - An uncluttered screen, consistent navigation and the use of plain language would be useful for people with different learning disabilities/impairments.

Target audience

The target audience of GAAD is the design, development, usability, and related communities who build, shape, fund and influence technology and its use. While people may be interested in the topic of making technology accessible and usable by persons with disabilities, the reality is that they often do not know how or where to start. Awareness comes first.

GAAD 2023

May 18, 2023 marks the 12th Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD).

Experience Accessibility First-Hand

GAAD organisers encourage designers, developers, usability professionals, and everyone else to take an hour to experience first-hand the impact of digital accessibility (or lack there of).

Go Mouseless For An Hour :

Go ahead and unplug your mouse and only use your keyboard alone (tab/shift tab, arrow keys, enter and spacebar) to navigate and interact with your favorite websites and applications. If you use a touchpad, trackpad or similar input method, disable it, and use the keyboard instead.

Developers and designers, we encourage you to visit a site you were involved in creating and take it for a test-drive.

• Is there a visible focus indicator (i.e., do you know where you are) at all times as you navigate each screen using the tab and shift tab keys?
• Are you able to interact with every element that receives focus using the keyboard alone?
• If there is any element that provides functionality if you hover over it with your mouse, such as revealing a tooltip or a set of actions, can you display this strictly using the keyboard alone?

Enlarge Your Fonts

• Check that your page(s) is accessible and usable for low vision/visually impaired users. To do this, use your browser and resize the text to 200 percent. Now look at the screen, and make sure there is no loss of content or functionality. Have all elements resized, including all widgets?
• To meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines V2.0 Level AA, the only allowable exceptions are captions and images of text.
• Check for Sufficient Color Contrast. An often forgotten but important accessibility item is making sure that a page has sufficient color contrast. Download a color contrast analyzer such as this one from The Paciello Group (which works for Windows and Mac) and find out how your page(s) stack up.

Check Order of Elements

• Check your Page(s) to make sure elements will be read by screen readers in the correct order. To check this, disable the page's stylesheets and compare the order of elements before and after.

Surf The Web With A Screen Reader For An Hour

There are a number of free/open source screen readers available for Windows users. One of the more popular ones is NonVisual Desktop Access (NVDA). Take a bit of time beforehand to download the software and learn some of NVDA’s documented basic keystrokes.

Mac users have a built-in screen reader called VoiceOver on their your systems. Take some time to visit the site referenced to familiarize yourself with how to turn on VoiceOver and some of the basic keystrokes.

Learn About And Use Other OS/Mobile Accessibility Features

The Windows 10 Operating System has a number of built-in accessibility features, as does the Mac Operating System. iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry devices also have accessibility features. Take an hour to explore what these are and try them out on the Web. In the case of the mobile devices, why not try using some of your favorite apps with different accessibility features enabled.

Try Other Adaptive Software Tools

The Adaptech Research Network has a library of free or inexpensive software that is useful to people with disabilities. Why not try one or more of these software.

Contribute Directly To The Digital Accessibility Effort

Following additional ideas for designers, developers, and others to 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.

• There are a number of free toolbars that can help designers and developers to test the accessibility of their pages. One of these is WAVE - Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool.  Why not run this toolbar 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.

Source : GAAD website