Recap of GAAD 2024 Conference at Hyderabad
Global Accessibility Awareness Day, also known as GAAD has been celebrated since 2012 on the third Thursday in the month of May every year by all the accessibility professionals, accessibility enthusiasts, accessibility advocates in and around the globe. Founded by Jo Devon and Jenison Asuncion, GAAD aims to bring digital accessibility awareness and disrupt the tech culture to include accessibility in to the mainstream.
GAAD 2024 at Hyderabad
HelloA11Y, a community for accessibility professionals around the globe, organized its first offline GAAD celebrations at L V Prasad Eye Institute on May 11, 2024. This event was organized with its partners L V Prasad Eye Institute, Barrier Break, Apex Co-advantage, Grailmaker Innovations and DigitalA11Y. This is not its first GAAD celebration; in the year 2020 and 2022 HelloA11Y hosted virtual GAAD event bringing a host of speakers from around the globe, presenting on various topics in accessibility.
However, what’s special about this year’s event is that it is an in-person live event, providing a networking platform for accessibility professionals to meet and learn.
Key Highlights of GAAD 2024
The event was presided by Dr. Beula Christy, Director of Rehabilitation Services, L V Prasad Eye Institute. While she highlighted all the rehabilitation services offered by L V Prasad Eye Institute, starting from children to elders. The service for people with special needs drew everyone’s attention. It addresses the needs of people with multiple disabilities that include visual disabilities too.
Our first speaker of the event Mr. Samir Dash, a lead UX/UI Designer, presented on “Empowering Web Accessibility Through Artificial Intelligence”.
In his presentation he highlighted the role of AI in addressing:
- Semantic structure through modification of DOM with the help of AI
- Writing alt text for images through AI
- Interpreting charts and graphs and providing summary through AI
- And providing transcription for multimedia content through AI.
He demonstrated these capabilities using OPEN AI, Vision AI and NLP models.
In the next presentation, Prem Nawaz Khan Maraikayar, a lead accessible UI Developer presented on “Fixing accessibility issues in Shopify websites”. While providing the fact that shopify websites are the most sued websites, he underlined the need for businesses to have one expert resource to maintain the site and accessibility experience. He also demonstrated the fix for the megamenu in a Shopify website.
In their presentation on “User First Approach in Accessibility Testing”, Siddaraj and Ghayatri from Barrier Break gave an overview of WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) and demonstrated how user centered approach helps accessibility testing more productive and effective.
Ram Kumar and Abhijit from Apex Covantage in their presentation on “Using AI to tag PDFs”, demonstrated why tagging PDF is important and explored how artificial intelligence could help PDF tagging much easier, efficient and effective.
Aishwarya from Grailmaker Innovations demonstrated Spacefelt, a mobile app that provides audio descriptions of objects and spaces based on QR code scanning. While revisiting her experience with inaccessible buildings, objects and spaces, she demonstrated how a QR code can turn the navigation and identification of buildings, objects and spaces much easier through audio-described information. She also stressed that Braille signages would be helpful but not useful as not every visually impaired person would know Braille and finding out those signages could be difficult. This proves once again that one size doesn’t fit all.
Founder’s Address
Raghavendra Satish Peri, the founder of HelloA11Y, a community of and for accessibility professionals narrated his enlightening and inspirational story of how he founded the community even in his difficult times. He underscored that it was his dream to organize a live accessibility event where everyone could come together, learn, share, network and care for inclusion. His journey is an inspiration to all the audience there. He also took the opportunity to recognize everyone who contributed to the event and in his journey. When he concluded the event with his lively speech, he underscored the team effort that brought the success.
My Experience and Concluding Notes:
Just like everyone in the room, I was delighted to be there; meet old and new people and learn from all the speakers. The Jam-packed auditorium and quite attentive audience proved the event was more compelling and excitingly experiential. Being a community member of HelloA11Y, I feel proud to have been a part of the event; listened to all the insightful presentations and been inspired.
I hope GAAD celebration brings the required awareness about accessibility across industries and and empowers businesses and people to create an inclusive future for all.
