Embracing Accessibility as the Cornerstone of Open Source
The recent findings from the WebAIM Million Project starkly highlight the pivotal role that development frameworks and tools play in shaping the accessibility landscape of digital products. A significant portion of these essential frameworks is rooted in the Open Source community. This represents not only a challenge, but a profound opportunity for transformative change.
The GAAD Pledge was a visionary initiative that collaborated annually with Open Source projects to champion accessibility and set new standards for integrating accessibility at the very heart of open source development. Over five years, we worked with project maintainers to craft pledges that made sense for their communities.
GitHub has taken the final GAAD Pledge, transitioning the initiative from an annual commitment focused on a single project to an ongoing stewardship of a movement that improves the accessibility of open-source software using a systems approach.
The GAAD Pledge is a call to action for open-source leaders to embed accessibility at the core of their projects, paving the way for an inclusive digital world where every code contribution opens doors for all.
GAAD Pledge Takers
GitHub
GitHub, as the home of open-source software, has taken the final GAAD Pledge to transition from an annual commitment to an ongoing stewardship of the accessibility movement in open source. Their pledge focuses on three inter-related goals: empowering people with disabilities to contribute to open-source, increasing the availability and adoption of affordable open-source assistive technology, and increasing the accessibility of mainstream open-source projects. GitHub's strategy includes improving their platform, building partnerships across the technology industry, and empowering open-source contributors through initiatives like the Open Source Accessibility Summit at All Things Open in Raleigh, NC on October 11, 2025.
Joomla, the renowned open-source content management system, has taken the GAAD Pledge in celebration of Global Accessibility Awareness Day 2024. By embracing accessibility as a core value, Joomla reaffirms its commitment to creating an inclusive digital world where everyone, regardless of their abilities, can interact with and access Joomla-based websites.
This year, Intel and the Open Federated Learning (OpenFL) project are taking the GAAD Pledge to make accessibility a core project value and enable developers of all abilities to effectively contribute to OpenFL’s deep learning framework. Part of OpenFL’s pledge includes adopting the newly launched Intel One Monospace font.
Identifying the typographically underserved low-vision developer audience, we designed the Intel One Mono typeface for maximum legibility to address developers' fatigue and eyestrain and reduce coding errors.
The third GAAD Pledge was taken by the Drupal project. To celebrate the 11th anniversary of Global Accessibility Awareness Day, Drupal has taken the Pledge to reaffirm their commitment to accessibility.
The Drupal community is again celebrating Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) but this time we are excited to also announce that the Drupal CMS has taken the GAAD pledge to formalize accessibility as a core value of our framework.
The second GAAD Pledge was taken by the EmberJS project. To celebrate the 10th anniversary of Global Accessibility Awareness Day, Ember has taken the Pledge to make Ember JS accessible.
As we join Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) in celebrating its tenth anniversary, we are delighted to announce that the Ember JavaScript Framework has taken the GAAD pledge to make accessibility a core value of our framework.
Our very first GAAD Pledge was taken by Facebook (now known as Meta). In celebration of Global Accessibility Awareness Day 2020, Meta took the commitment to making the React Native framework fully accessible. Meta built React Native and made it open source so it could be used and further developed by anyone.
We hope this pledge makes it easier for developers using React Native to create fully accessible mobile apps and inspires other organizations to make similar commitments to a more accessible future.
