May 19, is Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD). “The purpose of GAAD is to get everyone talking, thinking and learning about digital access/inclusion and people with different disabilities.”
Robinson Center Student and Human Centered Design & Engineering Major, Jessica Kuo, presented to the UW Community on Accessibility Testing Tools. We asked Jessica to share why this work is so important to everyone:
“In today’s world, technology is one of the central drivers of productivity, success, and has made life more comfortable. It was also supposed to blur the lines of race, gender, age, and ability, but technology has more work to do to become truly inclusive. Around 1 in 4 Americans have a disability, and nearly 5% of the population is blind or have significant visual impairment while 6% are deaf or have severe hearing impairment.
Ensuring that technology is accessible to everyone should be a high ethical priority for IT leaders. The work I do at the UW-IT as a technical accessibility assistant is extremely fulfilling as it allows me to test applications and work with company managers across applications like myChart, Microsoft, Zoom, Workday, among software servicing UW. I’m always so excited to see software updates from these different software applications because I actually get to see how they take the feedback we provide them and fix accessibility issues and bugs!”
Thank you Jessica for you leadership and commitment in this area. If you are interested in learning about tools to make your website or communications more accessible, please review the Accessible Technology Webinar Series Videos here.
Jessica presenting on a technology access tool, Bookmarklets.
The Robinson Center is committed to making our website and communications accessible to everyone. While we are striving to be proactive in making our communications accessible, please do not hesitate to reach out if you need our information in a different format or have any feedback.