For the fifth year in a row a student from the University of Dundee has won an award in the Young Software Engineer of the Year Awards run by ScotlandIS.
Kim Phillip, a student from the Division of Applied Computing at the University of Dundee, has achieved second prize in the competition and won the British Computer Society award for top student in the division simultaneously.
Kim's project "Make It Accessible" takes a novel approach to making web pages accessible to the widest possible number of users, whatever their ability or disability. Instead of telling developers how many mistakes they have made, Kim's programme sits on the screen as a friendly helper, trying to anticipate what the developer is doing and giving timely advice about how best to go about ensuring that it is accessible.
Kim says: "It is important to make web pages accessible so everyone can access what is available on the web. Print material, such as books, can be read out loud by software provided the pages which display them are appropriately designed. However, this is often not the case as many WWW pages are not accessible to people with disabilities because the designers and developers have inadvertently created barriers. It is obligatory by law that people with disabilities have a right to access the internet. Companies now have a legal obligation to make their WWW sites accessible."
The British Computer Society Tayside Branch awarded £125 to Kim Phillip from Forfar, for coming top in her class at the University of Dundee. This is the first year that the BCS Tayside has awarded this prize.
Kim is now working as a software engineer with Scottish Equitable in Edinburgh.
Contact Louisa Cross, Division of Applied Computing 01382 344151
By Jenny Marra, Press Officer 01382 344910 j.m.marra@dundee.ac.uk