Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) - 2026 – HYBRID

Mark your calendars for Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD)! This important day is dedicated to fostering conversation about digital access and inclusion for everyone. We invite you to join us for an engaging event featuring two insightful guest speakers, a dynamic DU student panel sharing their experiences, and interactive breakout sessions exploring various aspects of accessibility. Come learn more about the impact of accessibility, including digital accessibility and gain practical knowledge on how you can take meaningful action to promote inclusion in your work. Lunch will be provided for all attendees. See you there!

To ensure a welcoming and supportive environment for all attendees, we’re providing live captioning, generously provided by VZP Digital, to enhance communication access. Additionally, a sensory room will be available for those who may need a moment of calm or a break from the event’s activities.

Agenda

9:00 am - 9:15 am - Opening Statement Dr. Kristin Deal, Assistant Vice Chancellor of Community Support and Engagement (CSE) - Community Commons 1700

9:10 am – 10:15am Keynote Speaker - Dr. Arielle Silverman and Emily Romero - Artificial Intelligence and Accessibility.

As the GAAD keynote, Dr. Silverman will showcase how Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly permeating the ways we work, learn, play, and live. Because AI can readily convert information from one modality to another, it has great potential to increase access for users with disabilities. However, without proper guardrails, AI also carries risks for people with disabilities, particularly risks of algorithmic bias and discrimination, privacy losses, and safety harms. In this presentation, researchers from the American Foundation for the Blind will discuss a series of principles for disability-inclusive AI, derived from a consensus-building study with AI experts. The principles help build a roadmap for AI developers, deployers, and policymakers to follow to ensure that AI includes everyone. - Community Commons 1700

10:15 am - 10:30 am Break
10:30 am - 11:30 am - Breakout Session 1: Presenters Arielle Silverman and Emily Romero

In this interactive session, you will create your own accessible deliverable with AI! While AI cannot make everything accessible, AI can describe previously confusing images, and format your documents in a way that is easy for screen readers to read. Come prepared with something in your field you want to see made accessible, whether it is a handout with graphics, a tricky table, or an idea you want to newly explore today. I will use Chat GPT for this demonstration, and will walk you through remediating an inaccessible file. Then, we will work together on creating yours. Questions are welcome throughout the workshop.

10:30 am - 11:30 am - Breakout Session 2: Calley and her WRIT 1133 Students.
During this break out, students from WRIT 1133, Researching and Writing Access, will model accessible presentation and research methods. They will discuss findings from a qualitative class research study about student access on campus in order to improve DU accessibility for all students.

11:30 am - 11:45 am Break

11:45 am - 12:45 pm Lunch
12:00 am - 12:30 pm Digital Accessibility Awards! (Student, Department, and Faculty). - Community Commons 1700

Announcements by:
Faculty Award – Presented by Provost Dr. Elizabeth Loboa
Student Award – Presented by Chancellor Dr. Jeremy Chancellor Haefner
Department – Presented by VC of HR - Jeff Banks
12:45 pm - 1:00 pm - Break

1:00 pm - 2:00 pm - Afternoon Keynote - Mariah Moore and Dan Burke

Accessibility decisions happen constantly, but whose voices shape them? This presentation examines the cost of exclusion and explores what genuine co-design of accessible solutions requires: not consultation, not accommodation, but authentic partnership where people with lived experience of disability have real decision-making power. Drawing on lived experience and institutional examples, we'll unpack the principle "nothing about us without us" and challenge the gaps between who we include and who we empower.

2:15 pm - 3:30 pm Student Panel - Moderated by Dr. Niki Latino, Dean of Students - Community Commons 1700

Human Resources & Inclusive Community | Website | View More Events
Co-hosted with: Student Disability Services, Learning Effectiveness Program, Career & Professional Development, Office of Teaching & Learning, Human Resources & Inclusive Community (OWNER), The Neurodivergent & Disabled Student Alliance, Division of Community Support and Engagement, Talent Acquisition and Development

Contact the organizers