CS492 Gowri Kannan, Sarah Azam, Theresa Pittapilly, Shalu Pandey

							             CS492 : Gowri Kannan, Sarah Azam, Theresa Pittapilly, Shalu Pandey

                                  Jon Gunderson – Client Profile

                                           Accessibility Tools

Dr. Jon Gunderson, Coordinator of Assistive Communication and Information Technology

Accessibility for the Division of Disability Resources and Education Services, is currently

developing new technologies and providing resources for implementing accessibility on campus.

He also supports people working outside the state and national efforts in this field of study. In

addition to this, he has responsibilities for individual students with disabilities and problems with
accessibilities. The Department for Disability Services has about 37 full time employees as well

as student employees.

Dr. Gunderson has been at the University of Illinois for 16 years and currently supervises 3 full

time employees, 1 part time employee, and has 3 students who report to him. The students who

report to him are currently working on developing best practices to work on W3C (World Wide

Web Consortium) test widgets that use ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Application). They are

finding a main way that software programs can be used for accessibility APIs that provide

alternative user interfaces. ARIA is a way to make web content and web applications more

accessible for people with disabilities.

Dr. Gunderson has worked with 492 projects in the past. Last year, he worked with a team to

look at accessibility of software for Microsoft Office. The group worked on developing a

guideline based on CITA’s best practices to determine the accessibility level of Word documents

and PowerPoint presentations.

This year, Dr. Gunderson wants to focus more on accessibility of media. Our project, an

interactive web captioning tool, will create a way for people to make their media more accessible

for people with hearing impairments or for those with English as a second language.