Recognizing today, May 18, as Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) 2023, the Blinded Veterans Association (BVA) is one of 52 national organizations to sign a statement calling on the federal government to require websites and software applications to be accessible to and usable by persons with disabilities.

GAAD was created in 2011 to call attention to digital access and inclusion. An estimated one billion individuals worldwide and 61 million living in the United States currently have a disability or an impairment. In 2020, WebAIM analyzed a million homepages for accessibility issues and discovered the following, to name only a few: 98.1 percent of the homepages have at least one accessibility failure, image alt text is missing in 66 percent of the needed cases, and empty links exist on 60 percent of the pages.

The joint statement is based on the premises that, from both a civil rights and a business perspective, people with disabilities are largely underserved by today’s digital products, and that businesses lose a significant portion of their market when customers with a disability such as loss of sight have trouble accessing websites and apps.

Together with companion organizations such as the American Council of the Blind, the American Foundation for the Blind, Paralyzed Veterans of America, and the National Disability Institute, BVA asserts that accessible technology is essential to provide people with greater opportunities, independence, and privacy. For that reason, the organization continues to collaborate with the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to ensure that the latter’s information and communication technologies fully comply with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 on behalf of the approximately 1.2 million blind and low vision U.S veterans using these technologies.

GAAD is indeed a day to commit to accessible technology design and development, and its benefits for individuals and organizations. To read the full text of the joint statement and a complete list of the 52 organizations who came together in support, click here for the PDF version or here for the Word version.