How Brands Can Celebrate Global Accessibility Awareness Day

May 15th is Global Accessibility Awareness Day! Something of an under-celebrated day, this is an annual event designed to draw attention to the sometimes thorny subject of access, and the lack of it. 

This leaves us with the question of how brands can celebrate this vitally important day, while also taking on board the best practices for accessibility – all without making a diabolical blunder. 

What is Global Accessibility Awareness Day?

Global Accessibility Awareness Day is celebrated annually on the third Thursday of May. The aim of this day is to raise awareness of digital accessibility for disabled people, encouraging further digital innovation that is available to everyone. 

4 Ways Brands Can Celebrate Global Accessibility Day

We have four ideas to take this on board, with a range of short and long term plans: 

1. Draw attention to the work of disabled individuals 

Disability is the world’s largest minority group – and this demographic is also the fastest growing, due to the pandemic. Yet, generally speaking, disability is under-represented in the majority of media forms. 

When was the last time you saw a disabled person on screen – and without being connected to the subject of disability? Disabled individuals are often spoken over, or are under-recognised for their contributions to society. 

When it comes to Global Accessibility Awareness Day, consider drawing attention to the work of disabled individuals – their art, their social media output, as well as their contributions to our public life. Amplify their work by sharing it on your social platforms, engage with this group and highlight their contributions for a day or a week.

2. Educate about disability inclusion

Any content that is produced for Global Accessibility Awareness Day could be utilised to explain the best online accessibility practices – i.e a brand posting on social media how to use the alt text option. 

And make sure this continues across your brand – not just for Global Accessibility Awareness Day! This is a practice that can continue all year round, for the benefit of everyone. Even just making alt-text a part of your standards for social media communications, there are small steps that are always possible to take. It’s better to do something than nothing at all.

3. Work with the disabled community 

If you are wishing to demonstrate accessibility for Global Accessibility Awareness Day, what could be better than featuring disabled people in subject-specific campaigns around disability and accessibility? 

Accessibility needs to be authentically demonstrated. Global Accessibility Awareness Day is a chance to demonstrate such allyship, by having disabled individuals at the heart of any campaigns or social media content. 

Another benefit of this is brand loyalty. Dr Amy Kavanagh wrote on LinkedIn a few months ago to describe how, if a disabled person experiences great access, they are likely to return to that brand time and time again. 

Access is something that benefits everyone in the end – this is called the curb cut effect. Accessibility goes beyond just the twenty four hours designated to Global Accessibility Awareness Day; this is a long-term benefit to a brand, too. 

If you are looking for examples of where this has worked incredibly well, just look back to the launch of Primark Adaptive. Disabled models were at the heart of the campaign for the adaptive fashion range; accessibility was also considered by the brand, with multiple formats for the campaign utilised by Primark. You can find out more about the launch on our blog.

4. Think about the long term strategy

Global Accessibility Awareness Day is the perfect opportunity to show and to demonstrate allyship to the disabled community. However, allyship has to be long-lived; it is more than just a day of celebration, because that would just be paying lip-service. It’s tokenism – and there is a hidden cost to surface-level efforts. 

A way to demonstrate allyship with the disabled community is to think of the aftermath of this celebration. How can your brand continue with its work in the DEI space? Are there any practices you have that are in need of an access audit? Are there any other barriers that need to be broken in respect of disability? After the day has ended, think of the future – have a plan, and implement the best practices when it comes to accessibility. 

Global Accessibility Awareness Day is an opportunity for brands to demonstrate their allyship, and start their inclusion journey!  Contact the team at Purple Goat today and they will be able to help you in this journey.