We celebrate the days of the Internet and Accessibility Awareness but we work every day to ensure websites for everyone

May 17 is Internet Day and today is celebrated, for the ninth consecutive year, the “Global Accessibility Awareness Day #GAAD“.

Both dates are important to Tothomweb. They put on the table our essence, our DNA. We work to make the Internet accessible, usable and so that we can all access it, regardless of our capabilities.

Unfortunately, few people know about Accessibility Awareness Day, although it has been celebrated since 2011.

The original idea began with a blog post from a well-known web developer named Joe Devon. The entry was very simple and brief and went directly to the essential problem: in general, nothing is known about web accessibility or how people with disabilities access the Internet. This programmer proposed that the community work together to change the world. So he came up with the idea of ​​creating a Global Accessibility Awareness Day, a day of the year when developers, web designers, and so on. try to help raise awareness of the need to create more accessible websites.

What I wanted was for web developers to provide at least one accessibility tool on a web page.

Jennison Asuncion, an accessibility professional, discovered the blog and found it an interesting idea. From then on, she contacted him and began preparing for the event. Three years later, since 2015, this day began to have a fixed date: the third Thursday in May.

In the United States and other countries, the day is becoming more popular and many events are being organized. There are still very few in Spain and Catalonia. Basically the participation is focused on raising awareness through social media, which is what we did from TOTHOMweb, although we plan to do some event for next year.

It is a very interesting and necessary initiative. In our day to day life, we find that most designers and programmers do not know the accessibility guidelines or know how the various users navigate. Training is needed in universities, professional modules and companies. In this sense, we impart our knowledge to help break down barriers so that the professionals who build new websites every day can do so in an accessible way.

World Internet Day

It is an event proposed by the UN to coincide with World Information Society Day, with the aim of promoting the importance of information technologies, including the Internet.

The history of the Internet began on January 1, 1983 when the migration of the ARPANET network from the NCP protocol to the TCP / IP protocol was completed, although it was not until 1989 that the foundations of the web were established. as it is known today with the Tim Berners-Lee report, which defined the basic principles of the World Wide Web (www).

   During its 30-year history, the World Wide Web has grown to currently have 4,388 million Internet users worldwide.