May 21, 2020 is the 9th Global Accessibility Awareness Day.

People with disabilities (PWD) are often not explicitly included in access to the world we live in.

Each year on the 3rd Thursday of May, accessibility professionals and advocates around the world celebrate Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) in an attempt to bring awareness to digital accessibility (or the lack thereof) and inclusion of people with disabilities.

What can you do:

• Try using your computer without a mouse, using your keyboard to navigate. Use only your tab, arrow, and return keys.
• Use a screen reader such as NonVisual Desktop Access (NVDA) or VoiceOver or TalkBack to engage with websites.
• Watch a video without captions and without volume, how much of the content do you get to take in?
• Learn more about web accessibility from W3C

And if you're a website owner make some more inclusive changes to your site. Here are some steps to take:

• Use contextual links. Stop using click here or read more. Links should provide context for where they will take the reader or what they will open.
• Ensure your webpage and designs have proper color contrast. Consider a color contrast tool like the Color Contrast Analyzer - The Paciello Group
• Caption your videos.
• Use the accessibility checker on your documents and slide presentations. Have you checked out the MSFT Accessibility Checker or the Adobe Accessibility Checker?
• Run an automated accessibility check on your webpage. There's a great free automated tool from WebAIM called WAVE that will highlight errors and alerts in web accessibility along with what they mean.

If you know of a company that is interested in actually putting accessibility in their DEI, check out The Valuable 500. "If disability is not on your board agenda, neither is diversity. (Nor is innovation, productivity, brand experience, talent, risk, reputation...)" - Caroline Casey. Take a moment to watch this video about being "Divers-ish". Don't be divers-ish.

Watch, listen, or read the video discussion I had with Lee Andrese of akathame about accessibility and inclusion from last week.

Watch, listen, or read the video I created about my introduction to accessibility as a celebration of GAAD 2020.

And if you'd like to learn more about accessibility as a profession and movement, follow the hashtag #a11y. That's a neumornym, when a word where a number is used to form an abbreviation. Accessibility has 13 letters. A is the first, Y is the last and 11 letters are in between. A11y is pronounced A-one-one-Y not ally, although you can be an ally and an a11y advocate.

If you are interested in learning more about accessibility, feel free to ask a person with a disability about their experiences.