Carolyn Wilson, Webmaster, iCIT Web Team, has been awarded the Chancellor’s Award on Disability Concerns, which recognizes efforts to enhance the lives of people with disabilities. Carolyn was recognized for her work ensuring accessibility to the UW-Whitewater Web site for people with disabilities. She received the award at the Annual Spring Banquet hosted by the Disability Advocacy & Awareness Coalition and the Center for Students with Disabilities, on Tuesday, April 10 at Old Main Ball Room, University Center.
In her six years serving as Webmaster for UW-Whitewater, ensuring the highest level of accessibility to the Web has been a goal for Carolyn, who embraces UW-Whitewater’s core value of diversity. To illustrate the scope of this endeavor, uww.edu is comprised of 20,000+ web pages, and the site gets 70,000 visitors a day and averages 1.6 million visitors a month. Carolyn helped create and lead a Web Accessibility Committee, meeting monthly to discuss Web accessibility concerns, policies and conformance. She researched and drafted the accessibility policies, standards and guidelines. These policies serve as a strategic basis for accessibility monitoring and advancement. The iCIT Web Team provides continual monitoring and assurance that all Web content meets W3C’s Accessibility Guidelines.
As Webmaster, Carolyn works directly with departments and Colleges to update and manage Web pages, especially during the current roll out of a new Content Management System. In this role, Carolyn provides ongoing training with Web content managers on techniques for making Web pages compliant with accessibility guidelines. For example, to address the issue related to video for hearing impaired viewers, Carolyn led the charge for ensuring that all videos within uww.edu are closed captioned. This is an ongoing endeavor that she advances when working with any and all departments/units who manage their own Web content.
Due to the scope and importance of our online services, and in recognition for her leadership and stewardship of the UW-Whitewater Web site, we are proud to congratulate Carolyn for her Chancellor’s Award!