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On Wednesday, 18 May Tallinn University School of Digital Technologies will host the Global Accessibility Awareness Day conference, which this year focuses on social media, universal design and online solutions.

“Universal design is an approach which helps create products, services and environments in a way that would be accessible to everyone, offer strong innovative solutions and added value to entrepreneurship,” explained Daniel Kotsjuba, one of the organisers of the event.

This year’s conference will feature talks on how people with hearing impediments could utilise the online dictionary for sign language, how to design a web page so that elderly people would know how to use it, what is the state of universal design in Estonia today, or how much use is social media to people with impaired vision. “These are the topics we should think about constantly,” says Jakob Rosin, one of the speakers at this year’s conference. “Accessibility is something many developers, designers, project managers and architects often fail to think about during their everyday work. This creates problems in the lives of many people.”

GAAD is a worldwide event with hundreds of conferences and happenings around the globe, with the goal to make people recognise those in the society, who have fewer opportunities to use the services aimed at the average user. They are the elderly, people with disabilities, parents, children, and even people who arrive from a completely different cultural background. Stereotypes change and everyone can find themselves excluded at some point. “We have gathered researchers, politicians, designers, ICT specialists and people with special needs to discuss the accessibility and universal design issues the locals face,” adds Kotsjuba.

The Global Accessibility Awareness Day conference will take place at Tallinn University on 18 May at 10AM. More information about the conference can be found here:

The conference will be held in English.

Organizers from Tallinn University:
Vladimir Tomberg
David Lamas