At the second annual Mellon Awards for Technology Collaboration, held on Dec. 10, 2007, the University was awarded $100,000 for innovation in open source software tools. A total of $50,000 went to the OpenEAI Project, an enterprise application development project, and the other half went to the Disability Resources and Educational Services division. Jon Gunderson, director of information technologies accessibility in the division, said he is leading a development team to create and release an improved accessibility extension for Firefox.

“It’s already been available for two years,” Gunderson said. “The Mellon Grant will help us add new features, such as color contrasting and better reporting.”

The features of the new extension allow developers to create and monitor Web content for ease of accessibility for users with disabilities.

Receiving this grant will allow the project to take on paid programmers in addition to the student programmers already working on the project, Gunderson added. Taking on these new programmers means Gunderson and his team will be able to accomplish more.

Gunderson said he hopes the extension will include support for new specifications from the World Wide Web Consortium, an Internet regulatory board, as well as new regulations passed by the state legislature on Internet accessibility.

“The extension will have a reporting feature which will allow the developers to see the compliance with the new Illinois Technology Accessibility Law that all state agencies are required to comply with,” he said. “The tool will make it easier for people to see if their pages are accessible enough.”

Gunderson said many browsers and Web sites already have accessibility options, but these are often hidden and difficult to test due to scripting protocols.

“Especially with information that is generated dynamically, this makes all of that really easy to assess,” he said. “It’s really been a powerful tool to get this information which is hidden.”

The prize was awarded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, an organization that seeks to award open content initiatives, which are programs that allow free access to information and encourage collaboration.

Christopher J. Mackie, the associate program officer at the Mellon Foundation, said the University was the first recipient of two awards in the same year. The prize is designed for nonprofit organizations that work in certain areas, which the Mellon Foundation denotes. The prize awards accomplishments that benefit the community through technology.

“(The foundation) awards organizations, not individuals, who create resources to develop open-source applications for the community benefit, and are intended to be distinguished achievement awards,” Mackie said.

The committee that chooses the winners of the prize, with 10 recipients annually, include the former CEO of Mozilla, the parent company of the Firefox browser, the former director of the Xerox Park research facility and the inventor of the World Wide Web and director of the World Wide Web Consortium.

“This particular project was chosen because it is so widely used,” Mackie said. “And although it has nothing specific to do with higher education, it serves the core mission of making information available to anyone who wants it.