Student Media places in website accessibility challenge

Four Student Media websites were recognized in the third annual N.C. State Global Accessibility Awareness Day Challenge, a month-long contest designed to promote accessibility throughout the campus and improve the accessibility of campus websites. 

WKNC placed first in the small sites (fewer than 100 pages) category. The site began the challenge with more than 11,000 accessibility errors and corrected 87.88%. 

Four Student Media websites were recognized in the third annual N.C. State Global Accessibility Awareness Day Challenge, a month-long contest designed to promote accessibility throughout the campus and improve the accessibility of campus websites. 

WKNC placed first in the small sites (fewer than 100 pages) category. The site began the challenge with more than 11,000 accessibility errors and corrected 87.88%. 

Windhover took third place in the medium sites category (100-999 pages) with an error correction rate of 58.09%. The Student Media website placed fourth with 53.79%, followed by Nubian Message with 35.51% in fifth place.

Student Media had previously won first place in a November 2013 accessibility challenge, but this is the first time individual media have competed.

“Improving website accessibility is one of our goals for the 2015-2016 year,” Jamie Lynn Gilbert, assistant director of Student Media, said. “We are doing very well with our department site, but our individual groups need to understand how to post content with accessibility in mind. This challenge gives us an excellent opportunity to start that conversation.” 

“We will continue working on our web accessibility issues with the student leaders to further increase accessibility,” Doug Flowers, technology support analyst, said. Flowers and Gilbert manage the department website and provide support for the individual media sites.

According to Greg Kraus, University IT accessibility coordinator, more than 125,000 accessibility errors were corrected during the challenge.