May 19 is Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD)! Now In its 11th year, GAAD is a day to celebrate and learn about digital accessibility and inclusion, and the more than one billion people with disabilities around the globe who depend on inclusive digital technology and content.
Visit the GAAD website to learn more. We’d love to hear how you’re celebrating. Let us know!
Here is our monthly round up of digital accessibility news for May. If you have questions about our digital accessibility program, please contact Jeff Wissel, our Chief Accessibility Officer.
Upcoming Digital Accessibility Events at Disability:IN
- May 12: The second 2022 meeting of the Disability:IN Accessibility Leadership Committee. All Disability:IN partners are invited to participate. Please contact Mackenzie Ward with questions about the committee.
- May 18: The annual Disability:IN Global Accessibility Awareness Day webinar: Accessible Procurement: An Essential Element of Disability Inclusion on GAAD and Every Day. This webinar is open to the public.
- The annual Disability:IN conference in July will have lots of digital accessibility content! We hope to see you there.
Other Digital Accessibility Conferences and Events
May brings lots of great accessibility learning opportunities. In addition to the Disability:IN events listed above, here are some of our favorites:
- Microsoft’s Ability Summit, a free, virtual, community event on May 10 brings together people with disabilities, allies, and industry professionals to Imagine, Build, and Include the future of disability inclusion and accessibility.
- John Slatin AccessU (May 7-12, virtual and in-person in Austin) presented by Knowbility, a nonprofit leader in the digital accessibility consulting and training space since 1999. AccessU is the rare conference offering classes of 90 minutes or more for a deep dive into all things accessibility.
- ICT Accessibility Testing Symposium (May 16-19, virtual and in-person in Baltimore)
Digital Accessibility Resources
The Disability:IN Digital accessibility team knows that the amount of accessibility resources can be overwhelming. Each month we share just a few of the many free resources from our Resource Library, our blog, our partners or other sources that we think are great. Don’t forget to explore the Disability:IN Resource Library where you can filter resources by “accessibility” and find content created by Disability:IN and our partners.
Here are some resource suggestions for this month. If you are a Disability:IN partner and would like your accessibility resources featured in our monthly roundup, please let us know at [email protected].
- GAAD – Accessibility Related Infographic and Resources, a new Disability:IN resource with guidance on making social media posts accessible to people with disabilities.
- A Champions Program is a good way to scale accessibility knowledge and enthusiasm in your organization. Champs Program is an article on the DigitA11y website with lots of helpful information about these programs.
- A focus on cognitive accessibility makes your digital content more available to people with a wide range of cognitive disabilities. The cognitive accessibility guidance from the Web Accessibility Initiative of the W3C is a great resource on this issue.
- The new augmented reality-enabled Lens, from Disability:IN partner Snap, teaches users how to fingerspell their name and practice the ASL alphabet. It also has a game to track progress and tell you what you are getting right and wrong.
- Accessibility in the Metaverse is crucial to ensure disability inclusion for emerging technology. Is The Metaverse Likely To Be Accessible And Inclusive Of People With Disabilities? is a Forbes article explaining some of the issues. Other reliable sources of information about accessibility in the metaverse include The Partnership on Employment and Accessible Technology (PEAT) and XR Access.
News about the Disability:IN Digital Accessibility Team
- Disability:IN’s Chief Accessibility Officer Jeff Wissel will be speaking at the American Foundation for the Blind’s 2022 Leadership Conference on May 3rd. Jeff’s topic is “Mentoring Matters: Utilizing Leadership, Mentoring, and Employee Resource Groups to Increase Inclusion.”
- Disability:IN’s Digital Accessibility Resource Lainey Feingold will be speaking virtually at the Microsoft Ability Summit on May 10 and at Knowbility’s AccessU conference on May 11. Also on May 11, and also virtually, Lainey will be part of a roundtable discussion at the A11y Paris conference on the topic of Digital accessibility, overview of international best practices.
