On Thursday 18th of May, Atos will host its 9th annual event to celebrate Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD).
Global Accessibility Awareness Day is an awareness day focusing on digital access and inclusion for the more than one billion people with disabilities and impairments.
The purpose of GAAD is to get everyone talking, thinking, and learning about digital access and inclusion. Our aim in Atos this year is to discuss how we can create a more inclusive society.
With more and more organizations needing to embrace an inclusive digital transformation affecting their processes, their way of building and delivering products and services and their way of interacting with their partners and third-party organizations, successfully doing so at scale can be quite challenging. We look at a way of separating outdated attitudes and practices from the heart of enterprise, to target an inclusive future with digital accessibility as the innovative bridge which is there to be crossed.
GAAD over the years
Atos has run GAAD events every year since 2015 covering all aspects of Accessibility.
Watch the replay of the event on the below channels
Speakers
John Hicks
Head of Accessibility and Digital Inclusion France – Atos
Hello, I have over 20 years’ experience in the accessibility field in France. Right now I am leading the French accessibility team for Atos and working both internally and on client accounts.
I am an evangelist for the original discipline of cybernetics. Accessibility is a great measure of the health of an organization, and is a great opportunity to expand an organizations vision in all senses.
My PhD in Cognitive Science from the University of Edinburgh (2002) investigated recurrent neural network models of visual perception in the context of hemispheric specialization in the brain.
Emma Urquhart
Accessibility Specialist – Atos
Working in the IT and Accessibility space for 15 years, I have seen a huge shift in the conversation around accessibility over the years and look forward to driving further change.
I combine my skills as an IAAP Certified Professional in Accessibility, my experience as a Certified Agile Tester, and my years in working across secure government, healthcare, and finance projects to pull websites apart and make them better for everyone.
Living in the windy and rainy Scottish Highlands, I originally had aspirations to become a mysterious cryptid to rival Nessie but was sidetracked by the need for more voices advocating for accessibility. I am both neurodivergent and disabled, love storytelling in all forms, and can usually be found dual-wielding tea and Irn Bru while fixating on my latest favourite thing.
Julia Undeutsch
Application developer – Atos
I’m Julia, an enthusiastic self-taught front-end developer and accessibility advocate with a focus on UX design.
My goal is to bridge the gap between team members such as UX designers, developers, and testers to successfully integrate accessibility into the web development process through the dissemination of written content, consulting, and the like.
Alexandre Arnaud
Accessibility specialist – Atos
Accessibility specialist, at Atos France since 2021, working on accessibility testing, consulting, and auditing. I’m myself a visual-impaired person, using screen magnifier and screen reader to do my job.
In my previous work, I trained hundreds of low-visions, blind and elderly people to help them being empowered by using technology to overcome the barrier they faced, making me very aware of the challenges technology pauses to the end-user. In my spare time, I’m a beta tester of one of the leading products for the visual-impaired, called Freedom Scientific Fusion, where I make my best to push for fixes to ensure web technologies and standards are well supported in this assistive technology.
In my daily life, I practice the karate martial art and I really enjoy walking, reading, listening to podcast, spending time with my girlfriend, my family and my friends and laughing.
Contact
Antonio Santos
