Celebrating Global Accessibility Awareness Day 2025

Join hosts Natalie Garza and Natalie MacLees for the 23rd episode of the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast as they celebrate Global Accessibility Awareness Day. They discuss the day’s origins, its purpose, and current statistics on digital accessibility from WebAIM. Listeners will also learn why accessibility is vital and find practical steps and resources to make digital content more inclusive.

Natalie Garza: Hello everybody, and welcome to the AAArdvark Accessibility podcast. My name is Natalie Garza. I’m one of the co-hosts, and with me today is:

Natalie MacLees: Natalie MacLees, the other co-host.

Natalie Garza: And she is an accessibility expert here to bring awareness on this very special episode. What are we celebrating today, Natalie?

Natalie MacLees: Global Accessibility Awareness Day.

Natalie Garza: Yes, it is a special holiday that the accessibility community brought together, that we do every single year, and this year it happens to fall on May 15th, 2025.

Natalie MacLees: Yes. The third Thursday of May.

Natalie Garza: Yes. Do you wanna talk about how it was founded, who founded it, and what year it was founded?

Natalie MacLees: Yeah. Yeah. So, it all started with a blog post from Joe Devon proposing the idea that we needed an accessibility awareness day to help raise awareness for digital accessibility. He tweeted about it, and another accessibility professional named Jennison Asuncion, saw that tweet and said, “Yep, we need this, I’m on board.” And they co-founded Global Accessibility Awareness Day together.

Natalie Garza: Yeah, a new holiday. I don’t know if it’s fair to say it’s a holiday, but I will say it’s a holiday.

Natalie MacLees: Yeah. Yeah. A celebrated day, an observed day.

Natalie Garza: Observational day! What is the whole point of Global Accessibility Awareness Day, if the title doesn’t already explain?

Natalie MacLees: Yeah, in case it wasn’t already self-explanatory. We wanna get everybody thinking about digital accessibility. So, people who don’t know anything about it, we wanna try to get the word out to them, get everybody talking about it, thinking about it, learning about it, and committing to making anything that they make online a little bit more accessible.

Natalie Garza: Yeah. So spreading awareness to turn into action. Hopefully.

Natalie MacLees: Yes. Most people know. They will hopefully understand the importance of digital accessibility and want to take steps. To make their online presence more accessible.

Natalie Garza: Yeah, because I think the problem is not that people don’t wanna be accessible or that they don’t think it’s important, I think they’re just not aware. It’s just not common knowledge.

Natalie MacLees: Yeah. You find that a lot. I think, you know, we’ve talked about how accessibility isn’t included in a lot of web development education or web design education. It’s just not included, which kind of silently communicates this idea that it’s not actually tha...