Celebrating Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD)!
Thursday, May 16th 2024, marks the 13th Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD)! The idea of a Global Accessibility Awareness Day started with ablog postwritten by Joe Devon, and it was this blog post that served as the inspiration for GAAD.
The blog post was subsequently randomly discovered by Jennison Asuncion, an accessibility professional. Joe and Jennison soon joined forces, leveraging their expertise and networks and Global Accessibility Awareness Day was founded. The purpose of GAAD is to get everyone talking, thinking, and learning about digital access and inclusion.
‘Let’s Get Talking, Thinking and Learning about
Digital Access and Inclusion’
The State of Accessibility…
In 2020, WebAIM (Web Accessibility In Mind) analysed one million home pages for accessibility issues and discovered that 98.1% of home pages had at least one WCAG 2.0 failure, and the average number of errors per home page was 60.9! The most common causes of accessibility failures were: low-contrast text, missing Alt image text, empty links, missing form input labels, empty buttons and missing document language.
Embracing Accessibility as the Cornerstone of Open Source…
So What is the GAAD Pledge?The GAAD Pledge aims to be a visionary initiative, collaborating annually with one open-source project. The GAAD Pledge is a call to action for open-source leaders to embed accessibility at the core of their projects.
The very first GAAD Pledge was taken by Facebook (now known as Meta). In celebration of Global Accessibility Awareness Day 2020, Meta committed to making the React Native framework fully accessible. In celebration of GAAD 2024, Joomla is proud to join Meta, Drupal, and Intel in taking the GAAD Pledge!
Joomla: A Tradition of Inclusion
Joomla! (meaning “all together”) prioritises inclusion at its heart. The community welcomes everyone and is committed to being accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of ability or technology.
In recognition of Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD), Joomla reaffirms its commitment to accessibility across every aspect of its community, product and organisation. The commitment extends beyond simply meeting compliance standards and embraces the spirit of universal design, actively removing barriers that prevent people with disabilities from interacting with or accessing Joomla-based websites.
Joomla has always made efforts to enable the building of accessible websites, but accessibility became a paramount concern during the development of Joomla 4 (released in 2021). This focus received unwavering support from both the community and the Open Source Matters Full Board.
Joomla’s GAAD Pledge for 2024 and beyond
To champion accessibility, Joomla has committed to the GAAD pledge for 2024. This commitment extends beyond the pledge itself. Joomla aims to continuously improve accessibility throughout the year. This includes:
- Re-evaluating the accessibility of Joomla properties like the Community, Volunteer, and Developer portals.
- Enhancing WCAG 2.1 conformity within the software to meet the criteria of WCAG 2.2 wherever applicable.
- Creating magazine articles, at least every other edition, that focus on new developments in accessibility, including official guidelines and regulations from around the world.
- Reviewing software documentation to ensure it adheres to accessibility best practices for users, developers, and integrators.
And more…
Joomla is committed to providing an inclusive user experience across all aspects of its system, including its administration interface. With an accessible backend interface, Joomla offers site administrators the ability to access their settings and manage their sites independently, regardless of their level of ability. This approach ensures that every individual, regardless of their needs or abilities, can use Joomla effectively and productively.
Moreover, Joomla acknowledges the necessity to make efforts within its own sites to ensure optimal accessibility. While the journey towards full accessibility may be lengthy, our dedication to this goal is steadfast. We are determined to continue our efforts to enhance the accessibility of Joomla organisation sites, aligning with our values of inclusion and accessibility.
Get Involved with the Joomla Accessibility Team (JAT)
The JAT is comprised of dedicated professionals deeply versed in accessibility. We welcome new volunteers and contributors who want to make a difference. Please contact us athttps://volunteers.joomla.org/teams/accessibility-team orfor more information.
Contributions can also be made on GitHub - Joomla offers an extra a11y issue template and a11y-labelled issues and pull requests.
Stay Connected
Keep up with our GAAD pledge progress and more through updates on our social media, Joomla Community Magazine, and Mattermost channels.
More information about Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD)! and the GAAD Pledge can be found via the links below:
Global Accessibility Awareness Day: https://accessibility.day
GAAD Pledge: https://gaad.foundation/what-we-do/gaad-pledge
