GAAD pledge for cloud native projects

[arun-gupta]

The GAAD Foundation is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to disrupt the culture of technology and digital product development to include accessibility as a core requirement. Their vision is for accessibility to be built into the product development lifecycle for technology and digital products.

They provide GAAD Pledge which 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.

Given the global scale of CNCF, it would be great to identify a few projects that can take the GAAD pledge. Let's make our projects more accessible!

I would love for this to be a criteria as new projects are onboarded or add them for maturing to a later stage.

[geekygirldawn]

Looping @TheFoxAtWork into this discussion, since the TOC is responsible for determining the criteria for new projects.

[TheFoxAtWork]

CC @dzolotusky @dims as Liaisons, @nikhita as Vice Chair

We've (TOC) previously discussed the impact of pledges, suggestions, recommendations, and criteria have on projects and the community. Pledges are lovely things however what is more impactful is creating and implementing sustainable programs with clear guidance for projects to undertake should they choose. It is my preference that we demonstrate maturity in how this could be acted upon by projects before beginning discussions on establishing criteria around them.

Accessibility is an essential pillar in any contributor strategy and has the potential to enable contributions from community members who historically have difficulty getting to a point where they can consistently and meaningfully contribute to projects in whatever capacity their skills align with.

@CathPag had some good suggestions to begin moving forward with this:

• Increase awareness of GAAD for projects. This can initially be a web page on contribute.cncf.io/accessibility

Beyond awareness - if we want to make this actionable, TAG CS would need at least two individuals to step forward and lead an effort to identify specific guidance, actions, and recommendations projects could undertake that move from 'pledge' to 'action'. The critical factor here is that we have individuals interested, willing, and available to drive this effort from the beginning.

Eventually, along with the Deaf and Hard of Hearing WG, these efforts could become formalized into a Linux Foundation program for increasing accessibility and inclusivity across open source projects and foundations. CNCF has made great strides at KCCN, I can see this effort creating free training and resources for maintainers to learn how to expand their potential contributor pool through efforts like this.