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Ability Superstore Blog

Welcome to our blog, your one-stop resource for news, features and resources for living life to the fullest. View our articles on the latest mobility products and features with disability bloggers.

Global Accessibility Awareness Day

Posted by Jamie McKay on May 18, 2023

Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) is an “awareness day focusing on digital access and inclusion for the more than one billion people alive today who live with disabilities or impairments.”

It has just occurred to me that if there was an Occupational Health Global Accessibility Awareness Day, it would be abbreviated to OH GAAD. Which is probably what you are saying right now when you see that it is yet another awareness day.

However, on this occasion, I do think it is something that does need more attention.

Any time spent online should be the same for anyone living with a disability, and they should be able to experience the same information and opportunities, without missing out at all.

The image shows a website being set up on mobile and laptop devices to ensure it is easy to see and navigate

Accessible Websites

One of the most common, and easy-to-fix, accessibility issues, is not being able to view or interact with website content.

Low-contrast/hard-to-read text, no alt-text on images (a brief description of what the image is), and missing or misleading webpage or product instructions, are just a few of the issues that anyone or any business with an online presence should be able to resolve.

According to a WebAIM survey from 2020, 98.1% of home pages have at least one WCAG 2.0 (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) failure. The irony of writing about accessibility and peppering this article with abbreviations and acronyms isn’t lost on me, I will try not to use any more than is necessary!

How You Can Help

It may be useful to think of these different groups when looking at your/your company’s website. These groups aren’t exclusive, and the issues mentioned are not comprehensive by any means, but as a starting point, it could prove helpful.

Limited Visibility

Anyone with limited visibility will need alternative text descriptions for images and may want to use a keyboard, not the mouse to navigate your website.

Limited Hearing

Any video content should have easy-to-read captions for those with limited hearing. Capitalise the first letter of hashtag words #LikeThis

Motor Impairments

People living with motor impairments may require alternative keyboards, eye control, or adaptive hardware/software to aid their online accessibility.

Cognitive

An easy-to-watch home screen, consistent and easy-to-follow navigation/menus, and language will be useful for anyone with different learning disabilities or impairments.

An image of a news site on an ipad, called Accessibility News, on top of a Newspaper, next to a phone with graphs on it, and a cup of coffee

Where Do I Start?

If you look after your own website, then most SEO (Search Engine Optimisation software should be able to run an audit for you (most will include it in a free trial too) that will flag up any accessibility issues. If this is done as part of a monthly website housekeeping routine it should be easy to keep on top of any accessibility issues.

If you have a website administrator, they should be doing this already. If not, you can point them to this article!

Also, try and keep up to date with any accessibility products, news, and developments, that may make life easier for everyone. For example…

The Apple Personal Voice

Apple has unveiled a brand new feature for iPhone, iPad, and Mac users to make a digital clone of their voice in only 15 minutes.

The Personal Voice feature focuses on aiding people at risk of losing their voice, for example, anyone with an amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) diagnosis or other neurological conditions.

Voice cloning has up until recently, been a lengthy and very expensive, process. So, this new feature is an exciting development.

Apple has also announced a new Assistive Access, to simplify the screen layout with large, easy-to-read buttons, to help anyone with cognitive impairments.

Samsung Ambient Sound Feature

Samsung has launched a new feature to help those with limited hearing for their Galaxy Buds2 Pro earphones.

Two new amplification levels have been included in the Ambient Sound feature, designed to help those with mild-to-moderate hearing loss to be able to talk/listen in a quieter environment.

Accessibility Products

There are also accessibility products to help people make their online experience more enjoyable.

Magnifiers are available in all shapes and sizes, from simple magnifying sheets, to handheld magnifiers with different light settings, mouse magnifiers and eagle magnifying glasses.

The added bonus with magnifiers is of course they can help make life easier for reading books, newspapers, watch TV, along with phones/laptops and computers.

Get In Touch

If you have any questions about accessibility solutions or problems, please do get in touch. Ability Superstore will be more than happy to help!