Chapel Hill, NC (July 20, 2023) -- The Chapel Hill/Orange County Visitors Bureau’s official website, www.visitchapelhill.org, is making the Orange County, NC online hospitality industry more accessible to people with disabilities.
July is Disability Pride Month which first officially occurred in July 2015, marking the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Recently, the Visitors Bureau team noticed an uptick in visitors’ questions about digital accessibility and so it began to plan for more programs and services for people with disabilities.
The bureau’s website designer, Simpleview, has partnered with AudioEye, a leader in automated web accessibility and remediation. AudioEye allows you to explore your accessibility options for color, contrast, font size, animation, images, navigation and much more. Look for and click on the AudioEye icon which appears as a person in a circle in the bottom right corner of our homepage.
“Digital accessibility is an essential part of our industry,” said Laurie Paolicelli, Director of the Chapel Hill/Orange County Bureau. “Visitors come in all shapes and sizes, including those who have disabilities. 1.3 billion people globally live with some type of disability, yet 97% of the internet is inaccessible to people with disabilities. That’s a huge gap.”
“AudioEye helps us educate our customers on how to bring the physical ADA attributes into the digital world through our website, so we are better serving people with disabilities,” Paolicelli said.
This update comes on the heels of our Chapel Hill/Orange, North Carolina Accessibility Guide to Disability-Friendly Restaurants & Hotels in Chapel Hill and Orange County published in March 2023.
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