What is Global Accessibility Awareness Day?
Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) is an international event intended to get everyone talking, thinking and learning about digital accessibility and inclusion. This year the event will be held on 18 May 2023, but in the run up to the big day, we’ll be posting tips and techniques to help you improve the accessibility of your own teaching materials.
Every user deserves a first-rate digital experience on the web. Someone with a disability must be able to experience web-based services, content and other digital products with the same successful outcome as those without disabilities. This awareness and commitment to inclusion is the goal of Global Accessibility Awareness Day, a global event that shines a light on digital access and inclusion for people with disabilities (from https://accessibility.day).
At Newcastle University, accessibility is about ensuring that things can be used by as many people as possible, working towards equality of opportunity. Our commitment to inclusion is underpinned by both the Equality Act and the more recent Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) Accessibility Regulations.
This week
In a nutshell, it’s our collective responsibility to design out any barriers to engagement that may occur in our digital content, teaching materials, learning activities and assessments. Fortunately, it’s quite easy to do, and we have a range of resources, guides and tools to help.
To mark Global Accessibility Awareness Day, we will be posting a series of daily articles here on the LTDS blog covering a wide range of topics related to digital accessibility and inclusion:
Day 1 – An introduction to accessibility and inclusion
Day 2 – Creating accessible files (including PDFs, Word and PowerPoint)
Day 3 – Creating accessible pages in Canvas
Day 4 – Creating accessible videos in Panopto
Day 5 – Using Ally in Canvas
Can’t wait? Get a sneak peak of what’s coming this week on our new Digital Accessibility and Universal Design pages.