Global Accessibility Awareness Day Resources

Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) is a very special day for me. Without the many advances in digital access there is so much that I would not have been able to accomplish: getting a doctorate; writing a book; doing my work as an inclusive learning consultant (which involves travel, accessing the Web for research, creating presentations and more); being an advocate through blog posts like these,  my YouTube videos and ebooks..the list is long.

Digital accessibility is personal to me, and I’m grateful that people like Jennison Asuncion and Joe Devon took the initiative to not just create a special day, but start a movement. Even big companies like Apple are now getting in on the action. We are making progress!

I’m far from being an accessibility expert, but I try my best to continue learning and doing what I can to make things more accessible not only for other people but ultimately for myself when the day comes that I have lost all of my eyesight. And that’s the point of GAAD to me. You don’t have to be perfect, you jus have to take the first step!

I wanted to create this blog post as one stop shop for the resources I have created for GAAD:

• Infographic and Blog Post focusing on built-in iOS tools that benefit all learners.
• Google Doc on how to create more accessible Google Docs (how meta is that?). The Google Doc is also meant to be an exemplar. I have done my best to model the techniques I discuss in the document itself.
• TouchCast interactive video (updated) on Google Docs Accessibility (TouchCast does not yet support captions, so I also created a YouTube version that is captioned.) You can also access each of the individual videos referenced in the TouchCast as captioned YouTube videos: how to add alt text, how to create proper headings, and how to make links human friendly and descriptive (all three are closed captioned). As an added bonus, you get to see a much better version of me – my avatar created with Tellagami.

Along with these resources, I had the pleasure of moderating the #ATChat discussion on accessibility in ed on the eve of GAAD. Here is a transcript of our discussion available on Storify. A big thank you to Karen Janowski and Mike Marotta for allowing me to do that.

As you can see, there are many ways you can contribute to the conversation and the work that is ongoing to make the world a better, more accessible place for all learners. The key is to take the first step. As I did during our ATChat, I want to leave you with the following challenge: what is one small thing you can do or try today to improve accessibility where you work?