Development

Global Accessibility Awareness Day

Krzysztof Kaszanek
Published on 16 May 2024
Reading Time: 2 minutes

📅 Today, on the third Thursday of May, we celebrate the Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD). The goal of GAAD is to spread awareness about digital access and inclusion so that more and more people are thinking and learning about it.

Statistics

📊 As numbers often speak louder than words, let’s take a look at some statistics, to see why this topic is so important:

27% of the EU population over the age of 16 has some sort of disability.¹
We are observing the global trend of rapid aging of the population. In 2017, people aged 60 and above numbered 962 million. The number of older persons is expected to double again by 2050 when it is expected to reach 2.1 billion.² Many older people have age-related conditions that affect how they use the web.
69% of internet users with a disability simply leave a website when they find out it is not accessible.³
83% of the respondents stated that they limit their shopping to websites they know are barrier-free.³

We care about accessible web

💚 At Kiwee we are conscious of the importance of web accessibility and we actively try to assess and fix the accessibility issues found on our website, and the websites of our clients:

Monitoring accessibility issues using automated and manual testing tools such as pa11y, Contrast Checker, Google Lighthouse, or sa11y.
Suggesting the accessible solutions for our clients, e.g. can we replace this inaccessible slider with static tiles? Can the primary font color be darker to meet the expected contrast ratio?
Performing accessibility audits.

➡️ By ignoring the accessibility guidelines, you effectively limit the number of people who can visit your website or buy your products. We think that accessibility compliance will become vital in web development in the near future. We all should start thinking about accessibility issues as bugs, not nice-to-have features.

European Accessibility Act

❗ Starting from June 2025, the European Accessibility Act will mandate all private businesses operating in the EU, to comply with the WCAG 2 standards (“AA” conformance level). Today is a good day to reflect on that, assess your website, and plan accessibility improvements for the following year. Our blog post might be a good place to start! https://kiwee.eu/blog/how-to-make-your-website-accessible-for-everyone/