Every third Thursday of May, Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) is the number one worldwide event on digital access and inclusion, promoting inclusive participation for individuals with disabilities across all aspects of the public sphere.
Recognizing the needs of more than 1 billion people in the world with disabilities, GAAD is celebrated by accessibility-focused businesses and organizations, promoting awareness, advocacy, and education through workshops, conferences, social media campaigns, and even hackathons where developers join forces to work on the latest accessibility trends.
GAAD continues to emphasize the importance of inclusive design in making technology accessible to people with disabilities. Accessibility professionals, developers, and advocates engage in virtual events, talking, thinking, and learning about digital access through initiatives like the Cognitive Accessibility Jamie Knight project and accessibility-focused hackathons. Reports such as the WebAIM Million highlight persistent accessibility failures of home pages, from missing form input labels to broader design challenges that hinder usability.
To learn more about GAAD, including its origins and the importance of digital accessibility in today’s world, businesses can get involved in GAAD and discover how website accessibility overlays like Accessibly can help improve accessibility and support compliance efforts with ADA and WCAG for websites or mobile applications.
Origins
The brainchild of Los Angeles-based web developer Joe Devon and Toronto-based accessibility advocate/former Royal Bank of Canada employee Jennison Asuncion, GAAD originated from a simple blog post, where the two connected to co-found GAAD and recognized the need to raise awareness about web accessibility. The first event led to in-person gatherings across various cities, expanding yearly.
Today, several permanent organizations celebrate Global Accessibility Awareness Day. The American Foundation for the Blind celebrated its 13th anniversary by publishing a Barriers to Digital Inclusion study, involving its research team in artificial intelligence.
Other efforts have focused on global accessibility. GAAD was celebrated as far as Hyderabad, India, in 2024 with workshops and keynote speeches from professionals in the field. Even organizations like MathWorks (the company behind MATLAB and Simulink) host events on accessibility, engineering, and the sciences.
Microsoft, Google, and More
Apart from organizations like the American Foundation for the Blind and MathWorks, many Fortune 500 companies have made it a priority to celebrate GAAD and promote accessibility awareness, digital access, and inclusion over the years. These include Microsoft, Google, Apple, IBM, and Adobe.
In 2024, Google announced new accessibility product updates in celebration of Global Accessibility Awareness Day, including Android’s Lookout app, which allows the visually impaired to obtain more information about the world around them through image captioning and AI-generated descriptions. Google also updated its Look to Speak app, enabling users to select pre-written phrases using only their eyes, allowing them to be spoken out loud—an effective tool for individuals with cognitive and language disabilities. What a testament to strong digital accessibility!
In short, many organizations celebrate accessibility throughout the year, not only during GAAD. For that reason, we celebrate them!
How Businesses Can Get Involved in GAAD
There’s no shortage of ways that businesses can participate in GAAD.
One tried-and-true method is hosting accessibility-themed workshops. You can invite a panel of experts to discuss best practices and share real-world case studies on integrating screen readers, voice recognition software, and other assistive technologies into an educational, workplace, or business setting.
If you want extra points, make your event fully accessible by providing accommodations for individuals with disabilities, such as alternative text for visuals, sign language interpretation, and similar accessibility features.
Another way businesses can align with GAAD’s objective is by conducting accessibility audits on their websites and mobile applications. Our two favorite automated accessibility testing tools are WAVE and Axe, which check for compliance issues on your website. Always strive to work toward increased WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) compliance for improved digital accessibility.
Remember that automated testing tools won’t catch all issues. It’s best to use a mix of automated and manual testing with assistive technologies like JAWS and NVDA to simulate real user experiences.
Lastly, your organization may want to partner with accessibility experts. Along with your local disability advocacy groups, another important resource is organizations like the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) and accessibility specialists who can review your website and mobile application and provide a complete rundown of any accessibility barriers.
If you want to make accessibility part of your long-term strategy, we highly recommend downloading a website accessibility overlay like Accessibly. This overlay is an integral component of the digital accessibility GAAD aims to improve.
All in all, there’s no shortage of ways for businesses to get involved in GAAD. Whether it’s hosting dedicated workshops or focusing on improving accessibility on web pages and mobile applications, there’s always something to do.
Accessibly’s Commitment
One of the best ways for businesses and organizations to increase ADA and WCAG compliance is by using website accessibility overlay widgets like Accessibly.
Accessibly is a high-powered accessibility tool that can upgrade any website with user-friendly features for individuals with disabilities. By inserting a simple piece of code on your website (or using native integrations with platforms like Shopify), you can instantly add everything from alternative text for images to screen reader compatibility, allowing individuals with mobility, cognitive, visual, and hearing impairments to better interact with your website.Plus, Accessibly offers a free 7-day trial with access to all features. After that, users can opt into a monthly subscription. Let’s focus on increasing ADA and WCAG compliance and make your website or mobile application a shining example of digital accessibility today!
