Global Accessibility Awareness Day 2024 (GAAD) is coming up next week on Thursday the 16th of May, and this is the perfect opportunity for you to share with others what you are doing to be more inclusive or educate yourself on how to do more.
Below you will find some helpful ways that you can join in this GAAD:
1. Educate yourself on accessibility
The first step when embarking on your journey to be more inclusive is education. Learn exactly what accessibility means and the small changes you can make today to get started.
There are so many fantastic resources out there that can help you get started:
- DEI Consultancy Audit and Training organisation, The Clear Company offer guides and toolkits that will help you to measure and improve your business culture, and diversity.
- Recite Me’s Inside Accessibility – Join Recite Me’s education email series, where we address the important issues surrounding online accessibility. Throughout this transformative journey, we help organisations to take action, and champion a digital world that is inclusive for all.
- Founded by Professor Amanda Kirby, Do-It Profiler provides neurodiversity training and screening to both individuals and businesses to champion inclusion. These resources include disability confidence webinars, neurodiverse voices interviews, inclusive recruitment and much more.
2. Attend a webinar or workshop
Webinars and workshops are a fantastic way to engage with like-minded individuals who are interested in accessibility. Stay informed about evolving standards and best practices in making your digital content inclusive. These sessions provide practical guidance and real-world examples that can help teams understand the importance of accessibility and how to implement it effectively. By investing in such learning opportunities, organisations demonstrate their commitment to accessibility, mitigate legal risks, and enhance their reputation as socially responsible entities.
Last year on Global Accessibility Awareness Day 2023, we hosted a Workshop – How to Make Your Website Accessible and Compliant. Guiding you through the world of accessibility and providing actionable steps to make your website accessible and compliant with standards and laws.
3. Share what you are doing to be more accessible and inclusive
The best place to start when you are sharing what you are doing to be more accessible is across social media and in the news section of your website. Write about the importance of accessibility, where you have started and how others can do the same.
If you share any content on social media make sure to use the #GAAD hashtag, you could create videos, share accessibility stats, tips and much more.
Some other ways in which you can share your work are via:
- Q&A
- Video
- Podcast
- Blog/ PR
4. Carry out an accessibility audit of your website
Websites need to be built to an accessible standard, but many organisations don’t know where to start on this journey. The Recite Me Website Accessibility Checker is changing the way we address WCAG Guidelines on our websites. The key is to simplify the process and tasks while supporting you with expert knowledge. By running a scan on your website we can give you a summary of changes to make to your website to make it more compliant to accessibility standards. You can run a free scan on your website homepage today.
Alternatively, if you already have some WCAG knowledge, we have a WCAG Accessibility Checklist, this resource will provide you with an overview of the most common WCAG 2.2 errors. This will help you improve your website and user experience through accessibility best practices.
5. Schedule some accessibility training
Scheduling accessibility training for your team is crucial for fostering inclusivity and ensuring that your products or services are usable by all individuals, regardless of their abilities. It helps raise awareness about the needs of people with disabilities, equips your team with the necessary skills to design and develop accessible content, and ultimately enhances the user experience for a wider audience, potentially increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty. Please keep your eyes peeled for our FREE training courses being released on GAAD!
Online Accessibility and Inclusion Toolkit
This year we published our Digital Inclusion Toolkit that was developed to help businesses make a real difference to the lives of the millions of people around the world who encounter online barriers. The 40 page document provides practical advice covering the complete landscape of online accessibility from how to write an accessibility statement to our top tips for providing an inclusive recruitment journey.
