Thank GAAD – Global Accessibility Awareness Day is this Week!

This week is a busy week with a few events on thanks to Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) that is on the 21st of May this year.

Believe it or not – GAAD is now a worldwide event that encourages people to take timeout to learn, engage and discuss issues in relation to accessibility and people with different disabilities. The focus is on accessibility within the digital medium such as web, software, mobile etc. You don't have to be an guru expert in this area to participate as it is all about awareness.

If you are interested in the history of GAAD then it all started with a single blog post written by a Los Angeles based web developer by Joe Devon back in 2011. Joe set the challenge that “Accessibility know-how needs to go mainstream with developers”. You can read the original blog post here: CHALLENGE: Accessibility know-how needs to go mainstream with developers. NOW”.
mysqltalk.wordpress.com/2011/11/27/challenge-accessibility-know-how-needs-to-go-mainstream-with-developers-now

It so happened that through Twitter an accessibility professional Jennison Asuncion from Toronoto discovered Joe’s blog post by accident and they joined forces leveraging on their own networks to realize the event.

From there onwards GAAD has been celebrated each year. Checkout www.globalaccessibilityawarenessday.org to see the list of events that you are invited to attend. I’ll definitely be attending to the A11Y Bytes session in Melbourne on the 20th of May. Who knows what new things we would learn this time round?? See you there!