It’s the time of year again where we celebrate Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD). The annual international event, now being celebrated for the 11^th year, will be celebrated on Thursday 19^th May 2022 this year.

What is Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD)?

GAAD started from a single blog post, written by Joe Devon, a web developer from Los Angeles. Joe’s blog post was found by accident, on Twitter by Jennison Asuncion, a Canadian accessibility professional. From there using their extensive networks GAAD was born and has grown year on year since it was first celebrated in 2012.

The main purpose of GAAD is to get everyone talking, thinking and learning about digital access and inclusion, and the more than one billion people with disabilities/impairments worldwide.

With inclusion now higher up the agenda than ever before, it has never been more important to learn about what digital inclusion is and why it’s important to you and your organization.

What is digital inclusion and how does it affect me and my organization?

Digital inclusion is ensuring that digital products and services are designed and built to meet the requirements of all users, regardless of ability. This includes ensuring that people living with disabilities have equal access to such products and services.

Digital inclusion, should form part of your organization’s Diversity & Inclusion policy for both moral and legal reasons. Your shopfront wouldn’t be built without considering physical access, so why should your online presence? When it comes to the law surrounding digital inclusion, most countries have some form of legislation covering websites. It’s important to understand the law in your specific country/state/region to understand your legal requirements. 

What can I do about my organization’s digital inclusion?

Once you’ve understood what digital inclusion is and why it’s important, the next thing to do is understand your position.

You can do this free, by using Sitemorse.com/check and entering your website address, and it takes under 60 seconds. This will enable you to understand what needs to be fixed on a page at a diagnostic level.

There are other things you can do as well, for example, if your website doesn’t already have one, consider publishing a dedicated accessibility page on your website. This page is a statement to your website users outling what you are doing to accommodate users with disabilities and includes other information such as how to contact you if users experience issues with accessibility on your website.

How are Sitemorse celebrating GAAD this year?

Every year, we like to play our part in GAAD, to help increase the awareness and understanding of accessibility.

This year, we’re bringing back our One-million page giveaway and it’s simple to enter. We’ll be giving away one-million-pages of assessments!

For each entry, we’ll be giving away a free 3-month Sitemorse service all you need to is like and share either our LinkedIn or Twitter posts mentioned below.

To qualify on Twitter it’s simple, you just need to follow the Sitemorse Twitter account, @Sitemorse, and like and share this post: GAAD Tweet.

To qualify on LinkedIn, it’s just as easy, ensure you’re following our page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sitemorse/ (select the three horizontal dots on the right of the page and select ‘Follow’) and then like and share this post: GAAD LinkedIn Post.

This needs to be done by Thursday 26^th May 2022. 

We’ll then get in touch with you by Friday 27^th May 2022 to request the details of the website that you would like to be set-up. We’ll set this up and end all the details by Monday 6^th June 2022. It couldn’t be simpler

There are lots of great events happening for Global Accessibility Awareness Day that we hope you enjoy.

Terms and Conditions

1. This promotion is run by Sitemorse.
2. There is no entry fee and no purchase necessary to enter this competition.
3. By entering this competition, an entrant is indicating their agreement to be bound by these terms and conditions.
4. Only one entry will be accepted per user, per platform. Multiple entries from the same user on the same platform will be disqualified.
5. Closing date for entries will be 26/05/2022. After this date, no further entries to the competition will be permitted.
6. No responsibility can be accepted for entries submitted but not received by this date.
7. Each successful entry into the competition will be entered into the competition.
8. All successful entries will be contact by 27/05/2022 for the website you would like to be set up and details will be sent of the service by 06/06/2022. 
9. The prize (3-month free of charge Sitemorse service) is for new clients only who have not signed up to Sitemorse previously. Service is for one website only, full service terms and conditions can be found at https://Sitemorse.com/terms/. Service must be redeemed by 31/08/2022.
10. The service will include a weekly 125 page assessment of one publicly accessible website and access to it for up to 5 users.
11. Sitemorse have the right to remove this competition at any time.