April 22 is National Assistive Technology Awareness Day. For me, it is one of the most meaningful days on the calendar. Assistive technology (AT) is woven into the fabric of my daily life: it is how I move, communicate, work, and engage with the world on my own terms.
What Is National Assistive Technology Awareness Day?
Assistive technology is not specialized equipment that exists at the edges of daily life. It is the core technology that makes daily life possible for millions of people with disabilities and older adults across this country.
Tools such as wheelchairs, screen readers, communication devices, hearing aids, smart home devices, and voice-activated software are not luxuries. They are lifelines. They are what independence looks like for people who deserve it just as much as anyone else.
Observed each year on April 22, National AT Awareness Day was established to elevate the visibility of assistive technology — to move it from the margins of public conversation into the center, where it belongs.
AT Everywhere, Everyone: This Year’s Theme
This year’s theme is “Assistive Technology. Everywhere. Everyone.” — and that framing is exactly right. AT is not a niche concern.
Over the last decade, the Assistive Technology Act Programs across 56 states and territories have served more than 6.5 million people, generating an estimated $732 million in savings from a $311 million federal investment (Read more about these programs). That’s a 128% return: $2.28 saved for every single dollar spent.
These are not abstract numbers. Behind every one of them is a person who found their way back to something they needed — their voice, their mobility, their participation in work, school, or community life.
What AT Has Meant in My Own Life
I have seen, up close, what happens when someone finds the right assistive technology at the right moment. There is a shift—a quiet restoration of agency that is hard to describe and impossible to overstate.
When a tool gives someone back the ability to communicate, work, learn, or move through their own home on their own terms, you feel it in the room. You see it in their face.
It has been nearly a decade since that Monday evening in May 2017— the day I discovered my first assistive technology system, Sesame Enable. For the first time, I could finally regain access to my phone, a device that had been out of reach because I could not use my hands.
I still vividly remember sending my very first email using head tracking. It was short, and I sent it to myself, but it changed everything. That was the moment I realized I could still act on my own terms, powered by my own energy. You can read the full story of my first experience using head tracking to send an email here.
I still rely on head tracking every single day. I am profoundly grateful for the incredible range of assistive devices that allow me, and so many others, to maintain our independence in the essential tasks of daily life. That is what AT does. That is why this day exists. And it is why I choose, every April 22, to say so as loudly as I can.
The People Who Make It Possible
April 22 is also a day to recognize the assistive technology specialists, program coordinators, researchers, and advocates who do this work every day. Their dedication — patient, precise, deeply human — is what turns policy into practice and devices into changed lives.
I am grateful to the colleagues and communities that have shaped my understanding of this field, including the Northwest Augmentative Communication Society (NWACS) and the broader AAC community (Visit NWACS), whose work continues to raise the bar for what is possible.
How You Can Participate This April 22
If you are reading this and AT has made a difference in your life — or in the life of someone you love — I hope you will take a moment on April 22 to say so. Share your story. Reach out to your state’s AT Act Program. Tell someone what it has meant. Awareness starts with those who already know and spreads from there.
You can also read my post on The Necessity of Technology Access.
Assistive technology belongs to everyone. So does this day.
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