Global Accessibility Awareness Day Activities

Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) is a big deal at Reason One. Every year, the dedicated Reason One Accessibility Team (r1at) puts together a new selection of accessibility challenges that help us learn and grow in our different practice areas. This is coupled with Accessibility Bingo — for each activity completed, participants mark off a box on that year's bingo card, the "winners" getting bragging rights, as well as a deepened appreciation for ensuring site accessibility.

Now, we're sharing our activities and hope others will try some of these fun challenges along with us!

GAAD Activities

• Play a game to understand some of the barriers people face while navigating with a keyboard - Accessibility Maze

• Watch a video of screen reader usage and then try it out yourself.

  1. Video: A video with some screen reader basics. Most screen readers operate similarly, this video shows VoiceOver usage in Mac. But the skills are easily transferable to NVDA on Windows

  2. Screen readers:

     1. NVDA with Firefox on Windows - Screen reader keyboard shortcuts

     2. VoiceOver with Safari on Mac - Screen reader keyboard shortcuts

     3. VoiceOver on iOS - Screen reader gestures on mobile

     4. JAWS with Chrome on Windows (free version allows you to use the screen reader for 1 hour at a time) - Screen reader keyboard shortcuts

  3. Screen reader activity

     1. Open a browser, find your preferred news website and navigate using a keyboard and screen reader. Check if all the content you visually see is the same as what’s being announced by the screen reader.

• Watch one of these perspective videos highlighting different features that help people with disabilities navigate the web:

  1. Individual videos

  2. Compilation of videos (7:36 minutes)

• Try out an accessibility tool on your favorite sites (or your own!):

  1. Web accessibility simulation Chrome extension

  2. WAVE Chrome extension

  3. aXe DevTools Chrome extension

• Attend a GAAD event:

  1. Deque Basic Accessibility Fundamentals Bootcamp

• Bonus exercises to try!

• Take a screen reader selfie.

  • Written directions - Google Pixel & Google Assistant selfie

  • Written directions an prep for VoiceOver selfie with iPhone

• Follow accessibility advocates on Twitter. Find them with #a11y on Twitter or through our list.

Try one or two of these activities during GAAD week, or anytime, to help boost your accessibility knowledge and build empathy for all web users.

Also, check out the great work that our r1at team does year-round to make the web inclusive for everyone!