2023 and 2024 Gaadys Alumni Still Driving Impact

The winners of the 2025 Gaadys have been announced, and as we look forward to our annual awards event on November 20, we thought it was also a great opportunity to take a look back and check in with our Gaady winners from the past two years! We were excited to hear from many of them; here’s a glimpse into their continued growth and progress since receiving their awards:

Anthro-Tech, Inc (Washington State Parks website)

Heather Frye, Web Manager for Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission, says: “It’s been a busy two years since we launched! In addition to filling out our governance team, we added a new alert type for times of high congestion, customer and ADA concern comment forms, activity pages to help people find their passions, and at long last launched our Park History pages. We have launched our page auditing process to maintain accessibility and are working on restructuring our Project pages so more people can get involved with our public planning process. We are so thrilled to have a site that allows us to continue in our goal of making the outdoors accessible for everyone!”

Equalize Digital (Accessibility Checker)

Amber Hinds, Founder & CEO, reports: “Equalize Digital Accessibility Checker is now used on around 7,000 websites worldwide, including on NASA.gov. In recent months, our user base has been growing by more than 500 new websites each month. Recent additions to the software include more detailed WCAG and severity documentation, as well as additional guidance on how to fix issues. The plugin now includes 15 automated fixes to resolve issues common on WordPress websites, such as adding skip links, language declarations, warnings to links that open new tabs, and more. We're currently developing email reports so site admins and others can receive weekly or monthly email alerts about accessibility status changes on their websites.”

GoodMaps (GoodMaps App and Website)

Theresa Reno-Weber, CEO, tells us: “It’s been a busy 2025 for GoodMaps, with record user growth across our app and web platforms – and that’s just the beginning. We’ve also quadrupled our airport footprint to 28 partner hubs, giving millions of travelers seamless, camera-based accessible wayfinding. Our new Scan & Go tool now lets smaller libraries, museums, and community spaces add accessible navigation in just a few hours: no beacons or specialist crews required. Plus, the reimagined LookAround makes “what’s here?” discovery easier than ever – especially for blind or low vision users, and soon we’ll take exploration even further, enabling independence in any venue, mapped or not. Stay tuned for an exciting leap in inclusive navigation!”

Studio 24 (W3C Website Redesign)

Kate Jones, Marketing Manager at Studio 24, says: “We’ve started a project to create accessible admin templates for laravel based on Amplify and the learnings from the W3C website redesign project.”

Zappar and Unilever (Accessible QR Codes)

Dave Mather, Head of Marketing at Zappar, reports: “Zapvision Accessible QR codes are now on over 5 billion packs worldwide across over 45 brands in 26 countries. Zapvision also won three awards at this year's PAC Global Awards:

• Best of Show: IOU Design for Unilever: Global rollout across 35 brands,
• Best in Class: Universal Design for Bayer: Berocca & Canescool, and
• Best in Class: Universal Design for Diageo: Ketel One, Espresso Martin & Cosmopolitan.

Brand partners now include Unilever, Nestlé, Mondelez, Bayer, Diageo and more.”

We are incredibly proud of all our Gaady winners and their continued commitment to building a more accessible digital world. Their ongoing efforts embody the GAAD Foundation's mission to disrupt the culture of technology and digital product development to include accessibility as a core requirement. We can't wait to see what they’ll achieve next!