Today is the 10th Global Accessibility Awareness Day

Thursday 20th May 2021 marks the tenth Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD).

The purpose of GAAD is to get people discussing and learning about digital access/inclusion and people with different disabilities. Sadly people with disabilities are still being underserved by today’s digital products. According to a recent WebAIM report (February 2021), in their accessibility analysis of the top 1 million websites’ Home pages, 97.4% of the sample has accessibility errors – mainly poor text colour contrast and not having AltText labels on images. This was a slight reduction from the previous year but still too many sites are not enabling accessibility. 

So what is one simple thing you can do to make your website and social media communications more accessible? For example:

• using #CamelCase for hashtags – capitalising each word makes them much easier to read?
• using the SWIM principle in your writing – if your mindset is thinking about Someone Who Isn’t Me, your style will become more inclusive?
• adding AltText (alternative text) labels to images – making it easier for screen readers to describe images for people who cannot see digital images clearly?
• keeping to one idea/concept per paragraph to make understanding easier?

Simple changes can make a big difference and are often cost free.

If you want to know more, join our next Accessibility for Websites online workshop on Tuesday 22 June (10am to 12 noon). Follow this link for more information and booking details on our Events page.