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Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) - a reflection

| Kate Hinnant

Every Day is GAAD for Me

By Katherine Schneider, Counseling Services Emerita

On May 15, Global Accessibility Awareness Day is celebrated, but for me as a blind person, GAAD is every day.

Recently, I sent the following email to the company making a companion robot for elderly people that is not available to blind, Deaf or folks living with dementia:

“I qualify for an Elliq except for the fact that I'm blind. I was told some of its features would not be accessible, museum tours, exercise demos, etc. I have lived 75 years as a blind person in a sighted world where things are at best partially accessible. I'd like to work with you for free if necessary to help make accessibility upgrades to the device. Then you could market to the blind and low vision segment of the aging population instead of just saying "no". Interested? I can be reached at schneiks@uec.edu.”

The university is starting a new science degree in assistive systems and robotics engineering. The major will investigate the use of new technologies and robotics to help with daily personal tasks, personal mobility, rehabilitation, and communication.  Hopefully, students will be taught universal design principles, so retrofitting robots to include Deaf, blind and people with dementia will not be necessary because they’ll be accessible out of the box.

If each of us does what we can, where we can, we’ll have a more accessible world for all of us:

Library and web resources curated by Anna M Zook, Arts Librarian at McIntyre Library.