Every year on the third Thursday of May, something important happens quietly across the digital world. Developers close their laptops mid-sprint. Designers set aside their Figma files. Product leaders carve time out of their roadmaps. They gather, virtually, in conference rooms, in meetup spaces, to ask a question that should be central to every product decision they make year-round: Are we actually building for everyone?
That day is Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD). And with one month to go, now is the time to start preparing.
GAAD exists for a simple reason: over one billion people live with some form of disability, and the digital world still largely fails them. Through worldwide events, workshops, and educational initiatives, GAAD challenges the people who build the internet to do better, and to do it on purpose.
A Blog Post That Changed Everything
What’s remarkable about GAAD is how it started: not with a foundation, a conference, or a corporate initiative, but with a single blog post.
In 2012, Los Angeles-based web developer Joe Devon published a call to action. It was earnest, direct, and largely unnoticed, at first. Jennison Asuncion stumbled across a tweet from Joe and, by accident, found his post. The two connected, and what began as one developer’s frustrated appeal became a global movement.
That origin story is worth sitting with. The accessibility community didn’t wait for permission. They built something, and it compounded. GAAD is now recognized across six continents. It is proof that advocacy, paired with action, creates change.
What It Looks Like in Practice
I’ve had the privilege of organizing GAAD events across different organizations, and each one taught me something new about what inclusion actually means.
At one employer, an airline, we were in the early stages of our digital accessibility journey, mandated by the U.S. Department of Transportation under the Air Carriers Access Act. That first GAAD event was grassroots by necessity. We converted a multipurpose room into a series of interactive stations: one focused on vision impairment, another on the deaf and hard-of-hearing experience, and another on assistive technology, screen readers, switches, and built-in operating system features. At one station, we looped a video of Christopher Hills demonstrating how he uses assistive technology to edit video. The room was buzzing. People who had never thought about screen readers were suddenly using them. That’s the power of making the invisible visible.
Note: I unfortunately am not the owner of the video, therefore, I was unable to create an alternative audio description audio track.
Years later, as the organizer of the Chicago Digital Accessibility & Inclusive Design Meetup, we hosted GAAD panels that brought people with disabilities directly into the room as the experts, because they are. One year, we ran a “speed dating” style format: individuals with specific disabilities sat at the center of small groups, sharing their experiences navigating the digital world. Every fifteen minutes, attendees rotated to a new group. The conversations were raw, generous, and illuminating.
One moment from that session has stayed with me. Among our participants was an individual who was both blind and deaf. They used a portable refreshable braille display to engage with digital content. I panicked internally, how do I even communicate with them about where to sit? Before my anxiety could take over, my co-organizer, who is deaf, began signing into the cup of this person’s hand. Tactile sign language. It was the first time I had witnessed that form of communication, and it stopped me cold. It reminded me that accessibility isn’t one thing. It’s a constellation of human needs, each one worthy of thoughtful design.
Three Principles That Actually Matter
If your organization is planning something for GAAD this year, build it on these foundations:
- Involve disabled people, don’t just talk about them. The most credible and impactful events center disabled voices, whether that’s through user testing, panels, or amplifying existing advocates. And compensate people fairly for their expertise. Don’t ask for free labor in the name of awareness.
- Treat GAAD as a launchpad, not a finish line. Announcing measurable accessibility goals on May 15, or launching an accessibility champions program that week, signals that your organization is building a culture, not staging a performance.
- Model the practices you promote. If you host an accessibility event without captions, without sign language interpretation, without accessible slides, you’ve already made the point, just not the one you intended.
20 Ideas to Get You Started
You don’t need to do all of this. Pick one or two that fit your team’s capacity and build from there.
Education
- Host a lunch & learn: Invite a disability advocate or accessibility expert to speak about lived experience and practical inclusion strategies.
- Run a screen reader demo: Walk teams through a real-time screen reader session so they understand what inaccessible design actually feels like to navigate.
- Curate a resource library: Compile and distribute articles, videos, and guides on WCAG, ARIA, and inclusive design principles.
- Run empathy simulations: Let employees experience the web using keyboard-only navigation, high-contrast mode, or colorblindness simulators.
- Host an accessibility quiz: A trivia game focused on disability history, stats, and best practices can be more memorable than a slide deck.
Events
- Panel with disabled employees: Only with willing volunteers, invite colleagues with disabilities to share their experiences in a moderated format.
- Partner with a local disability organization: Co-host a workshop or volunteer event with a nonprofit working in accessibility or assistive technology.
- Screen a documentary: Pair it with a facilitated discussion. Film creates empathy in ways that presentations often can’t.
- Inclusive wellness activity: Design a team activity; a walk, a yoga session, an art workshop, that is genuinely participatory for all abilities.
- Host a virtual global event: Use it to model best practices: live captions, sign language interpretation, accessible slides, flexible formats.
Internal Operations
- Run an accessibility audit sprint: Carve out focused time for dev and design teams to audit products and tools against WCAG 2.2 AA.
- Review hiring and HR materials: Audit job postings, onboarding docs, and HR policies for accessibility gaps and non-inclusive language.
- Commit to captioning all internal video: Make it a policy, not a one-time gesture. Every recorded meeting and training should have captions and transcripts.
- Launch an accessibility champions program: Embed responsibility across teams so progress doesn’t stop when the awareness month ends.
- Announce your accessibility goals: Use GAAD as the milestone to go on record with measurable commitments for the year ahead.
Communications
- Run a social media campaign: Share daily facts, spotlights, or tips throughout the week on LinkedIn, Instagram, or your newsletter.
- Publish a transparent blog post or op-ed: Write honestly about your organization’s accessibility journey: where you are, what you’ve learned, and what you’re committing to next.
- Amplify disabled voices: Share and feature content created by disabled creators and technologists. Listen more than you broadcast.
Action & Audit
- Conduct user testing with disabled users: Recruit and compensate disabled users to test your product. Their feedback is among the most valuable you’ll ever receive.
- Donate as a team: Collectively support organizations advancing disability rights, assistive technology, or accessibility education.
Looking for More?
The GAAD Foundation’s Events & Activities page publishes a running list of this year’s scheduled events alongside archives from past years. If you’re planning something, submit it, your event belongs in that community.
Start Now, Not Later
The clock is ticking, but that’s not a reason for anxiety. Your first GAAD event doesn’t need to be grand or flawless. It needs to be sincere.
Schedule something. Make it accessible. Center the people who live this experience every day. And then, crucially, don’t let May 21 be the last time you think about it.
The digital world is built by people making daily decisions. GAAD is a reminder that those decisions have consequences for over a billion people. That’s not a burden. That’s an opportunity to build something worth being proud of.
