In recognition of Global Accessibility Awareness Day, we are very pleased to launch our People and planet webpage: a showcase for our company's commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI); sustainability; and accessibility.

Wholly in keeping with our publicly stated progressive values, and repudiating unnecessarily inflammatory debate about these topics, the page makes clear our support for all people and the health of our one and only planet.

Values alignment

Give Lively places a special emphasis on pursuing our mission while holding true to our progressive values. 

First and foremost, we personally review every membership application to ensure a nonprofit's alignment with our values. 

But just as importantly, we abide by these values internally, empowering our staff to rally around them – values already of significance in our personal lives – and demonstrate them at and through work.

Special interest groups

Give Lively employees are truly motivated by social and environmental issues.

Accordingly, Give Lively has welcomed and backed the creation of staff-managed special interest groups to guide work-related discussions and initiatives associated with sustainability, accessibility and DEI. 

Our "People & planet” page furthers those efforts, acknowledging and celebrating staff leadership in these areas.   

Global Accessibility Awareness Day

Not at all by coincidence, today is Global Accessibility Awareness Day, a time intended "to get everyone talking, thinking and learning about digital access and inclusion, and the more than one billion people with disabilities/impairments.” (Check out this trio of Give Lively member nonprofits breaking barriers and making the world more inclusive.)

The Accessibility section of our “People & planet” page brings to the fore our quiet but steady move toward conformance with WCAG 2.1 level AA. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) define how designers and developers can make web content more accessible to people with disabilities. 

At present, Give Lively is partially conformant, which means that some parts of our extended web presence do not fully meet accessibility standards. 

Updating existing materials and preparing for ongoing future alignment is very much a work in progress with an extended timeline.

Looking at existing content, we’ve been:

• adding alt tags, where possible, to images
• revisiting and repairing title structures and clickable buttons
• analyzing and updating colors for sufficient contrast
• auditing videos to include captions and, where possible, transcripts
• ensuring underlying code (landmarks, ARIA tags etc.) is WCAG conformant 
• offering text-only email alternatives
• establishing templates for fixing accessibility bugs.

Looking ahead at how we're managing future development, we’re working on:

• processes that accomplish all of the above as part of the normal workflow
• design and UX procedures that account for accessibility standards, including a new color system that supports sufficient contrasts
• selecting and implementing accessibility-forward design frameworks.