Libraries among NC State’s Web Accessibility champions

When you have a massive website, with a lot of content, search functionality, and all sorts of bells and whistles, it’s a challenge to make it accessibility-compatible with keyboards, screen readers, and other assistive devices.

The Libraries’ User Experience team and student workers are up to that challenge.

The Libraries website was recognized as a champion in the 2022 Web Accessibility Challenge by NC State’s IT Accessibility Office—one of three campus sites with over 1,000 pages to achieve the distinction of having zero web accessibility errors.

“The User Experience Department did something with our website we've never done before—we removed every single accessibility error,” says Erik Olson, User Experience Engineer. “This is worth bragging about, because we have such a huge site—nearly 14,000 pages. This was a long-term team effort, but the vast majority of the errors were fixed by our students.”

Former student Lauren Murillo, who was recognized as a Web Accessibility champion in 2020, and current student Molly Sun, combined to remove more than 300,000 errors over the past two years.

“We are proud of both of them because scouring a complicated site that has 14,000 pages was time consuming and very technical,” Olson adds.