Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD)

Hello Owls,

Happy Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD)! This celebration is on the third Thursday of each May where its purpose is to get everyone talking, thinking and learning about digital access, inclusion and the more than one billion people with disabilities.

Check out the official events on the GAAD page and sign up for any that look interesting! Of particular note are the following virtual events: Developers’ Guide to Getting Started with Accessibility Testing, Business of Accessibility-Expert Panel, Siteimprove GAAD for Good 2023: Built without barriers, and Accessibility Awareness and Foundations Webinar. I hope you join me in attending some of these great events.

If you enjoy reading and learning from ebooks, I highly recommend Emily Ladau’s Demystifying Disability: What to Know, What to Say, and How to Be an Ally. Luckily, Fondren provides the Rice community free electronic access to the ebook using the link above! Emily’s content is laid out as a friendly handbook on the important disability issues you need to know about including: how to appropriately think, talk, and ask about disability, recognizing and avoiding ableism (discrimination toward disabled people), practicing good disability etiquette and much more (Ebsco, 2021).

I attended a free keynote from the Knowability conference last week titled The Future of History of Accessibility with Peter Slatin. My main takeaway from Peter was from the term he used “social accessibility” talking about how society needs to accept and value people with disabilities in order for us to see real change in the accessibility field. It was a good boost for me as if you’ve read any of my other content or attended one of my trainings, this is a point I try to get across as well. His words about disabled people being valued, included and being able to fully participate in society resonated with me on a personal level for myself and thinking about the changes I can help bring about in the world for the younger generation of my own family who identify as disabled and/or neurodiverse. So on this Global Accessibility Awareness Day, I hope you take some time to sign up for a webinar (even if it is for the recording later) or read a few chapters out of Emily Ladau’s book. How can you learn more about disability and accessibility in order to help make Rice and our world more inclusive?