News and Information

UC Davis GAAD 2014

Global Accessibility Awareness Day, known as GAAD, is a one-day event to raise awareness about electronic accessibility. GAAD was started by a developer’s 2011 blog post complaining about the lack of information about accessibility available to developers and wanting to discuss the issues with other developers. The blog post went viral and the response from the community was overwhelmingly positive.

Since 2011, accessibility consultants and other interested parties have hosted their own events on accessibility issues during GAAD, freely providing presentations and offering accommodations for those in need at no charge to the attendees.

UC Davis’s e-Access committee hosted the public 2014 GAAD events at Shields Library from 1:00 pm until 3:30 pm, with presentations occurring in 30 minute increments at 205 Shields Library, with breakout sessions occurring in the CAT lab and 484 Shields Library. Marketing for GAAD occurred on Dateline and The Wheel, with other invites going out via listservs, and we were listed in 2 separate locations on the GAAD website.

There was a great turnout for the following sessions announced:

  • Universal Design on Learning
  • Video Captioning
  • Assistive Technology at UC Davis
  • JavaScript and Web Application Accessibility
  • Center for Accessible Technologies Lab

We look forward to continuing raising accessibility awareness during future GAAD events!

GAAD references:

GAAD Facebook

GAAD 2014

UC Davis Dateline article

UC Davis The Wheel article