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Equity awards
About the awards
The UniSA Equity Awards encourage and reward outstanding efforts in
support of the University’s equity objectives, and promote good practice
and innovation in implementing equity. The awards are open to UniSA
staff (individuals and groups) who have made a significant contribution
to advancing equity in employment or education. The next Equity Awards
are scheduled for 2006.
In 2006, a new sub-category of the Equity Awards has been introduced to
reward the best example of the application of the W3C web accessibility
guidelines to a University web page. More information about this
sub-category, the Online Accessibility Equity Award is provided below.
Entries may address any area of student or staff equity covered by
UniSA’s:
For information about equity and diversity please click
here.
Examples of efforts or
achievements that could be considered for an award are:
- Projects that improve access or success for students from equity
groups (Aboriginal students, Torres Strait Islander students, people
from non-English speaking backgrounds, people with disabilities,
people from low socio-economic status backgrounds, people from rural
and isolated areas, and women in non-traditional areas of study or
postgraduate study).
- Initiatives that enhance employment or career development
opportunities for staff from equity groups (Aboriginal people, Torres
Strait Islander people, people with disabilities, people from
non-English speaking backgrounds, and women).
- Employment initiatives that encourage people from equity groups to
gain employment at UniSA.
- Implementation of socially and culturally inclusive curriculum
content, delivery, and assessment to cater for students’ diverse
needs.
- Introduction of flexible work practices or other work/family
initiatives that help staff or students balance their work/study and
family/life responsibilities.
- Implementation of equitable management practices.
- Contributions to increased equity awareness and respect for
diversity of staff and students at a faculty/divisional or University
level.
- Online Accessibility Equity Award - best application of W3C web
accessibility guidelines in the design of a University web page.
Award winners will be recognised in a number of ways including:
- Presentation of a certificate acknowledging their achievement and
the category of their Award
- An allocation of funds to be used to continue or expand equity
initiatives
- A feature spread in UniSANews describing the achievements of the
winner/s.
By nominating a staff member for an Equity
Award, you will be bringing due recognition to a deserving individual or
group, and encouraging them to
continue their valuable work.
Award categories
Equity Awards are presented in the following categories:
Individual Awards
- Individual contribution (staff): awarded to an individual staff
member for significant contribution or achievement towards equity
- Individual contribution (manager/supervisor): awarded to a manager
or supervisor for equitable management practices or other significant
achievement towards equity.
Group Awards
- Group contribution (staff): awarded to a group of individuals,
staff team, committee or work unit for significant group effort or
achievement towards equity.
Up to two individual and two group awards will be granted, however
the Equity Awards Committee reserves the right not to recommend an
award for every category. No more than one award will be granted to a
nominee for the same activity.
Online Accessibility Equity Award
- Best application of W3C web accessibility guidelines to a
University web page.
Eligibility
UniSA academic and general staff, contract and continuing, are
eligible for any of the categories, however awards will not normally be
granted to staff employed primarily to implement equity policies or
programs.
Nominations
All current UniSA staff can submit nominations.
Self-nominations will be accepted. An individual or group may not be
nominated for more than one award category for the same activity. If an
individual or group is to be nominated for more than one award category
for different activities, a separate nomination form should be completed
for each nomination. Please note, there is a separate form for the
Online Accessibility Equity Award.
Nominations should:
- describe the nominee’s activity
- demonstrate the outcomes or progress achieved in relation to one
(1) or more of UniSA’s equity objectives, and
- address the other selection criteria listed in these guidelines
under Selection.
Please fill out this
nomination form
(Word 68KB) and email it to briony.sterk@unisa.edu.au.
If you are applying for the Online Accessibility Equity Award, use
this nomination form (Word 88KB) and
email it to briony.sterk@unisa.edu.au.
Selection
The Equity Awards Committee (detailed below) will consider
nominations and make recommendations to the Vice-Chancellor. Nominations
will be assessed against the following selection criteria:
- Impact: Achieved results or significant progress towards achieving
equity objective(s)
- Sustainability: Intended continuation or long term effects of the
initiative
- Transferability: Extent to which the practice can be applied to
other areas of the University or to other equity objectives
- Innovation: Attempted a new or creative approach to advancing
equity
- Other: Any additional relevant criteria identified by the
nominator.
Nominations for the Online Accessibility Equity Award will be
considered by a specialist committee that will recommend a single winner
to the Equity Awards Committee. The criteria for an award would be the
level at which the web author has incorporated the W3C guidelines, which
include:
- Provide equivalent alternatives to auditory and visual content,
including images, graphical representations of text, animations, audio
tracks of video, and video.
- Ensure that all information conveyed with colour is also available
without colour, eg. from context or markup.
- Clearly identify changes in the natural language of a document’s text
and any text equivalents (eg. captions).
- Organize documents so they may be read without style sheets.
- Ensure that equivalents for dynamic content are updated when the dynamic
content changes.
- Ensure data tables use row and column headers.
- Ensure that pages are usable when scripts, applets or other programmatic
objects are turned off or not supported.
- Provide an auditory description of the important information of the
visual track of a multimedia presentation.
- For any time-based multimedia presentation (eg movie or animation),
synchronize equivalent alternatives (eg. captions or auditory
descriptions of the visual track) with the presentation.
- Ensure that foreground and background colour combinations provide
sufficient contrast when viewed by someone having colour deficits or
when viewed on a black and white screen.
- Use style sheets to control layout and presentation.
- Use absolute rather than relative sizing of fonts which prevents users
from resizing text to a larger size.
- Clearly identify the target of each link.
- Provide metadata to add semantic information to pages and sites.
- Provide information about the general layout of a site (eg. a site map
or table of contents).
- Use the clearest and simplest language appropriate for a site's content.
Nominated web pages/sites will be assessed with an accessibility testing
tool to verify the level at which the web author has incorporated the
W3C guidelines and will also be assessed on how they work with UniSA’s
assistive technology (eg screen readers, alternative keyboards).
A panel representing the Online Accessibility Management Group,
Disability Services and E-Business Solutions (ISTS) will be responsible
for selecting a winner for the Online Accessibility Equity Award.
The amount of an award made under this sub-category will be determined
by the Equity Awards Committee taking into account the available funds
and the overall number of successful nominations in all categories.
Equity Awards Committee
The Equity Awards Committee will select award winners and determine
the distribution of funds to successful nominees. Membership of the
committee will be:
- Pro Vice Chancellor: Organisational Strategy and Change (Chair)
- Pro Vice Chancellor: Academic
- Director: Human Resources
- Student member of Council
- External member of Council.
The Executive Officer to the Pro Vice Chancellor: Organisational
Strategy and Change is Executive Officer to the Equity Awards
Committee.
Winners
More information
If you require any further information, or support and assistance in
compiling nominations, please contact
Briony Sterk, Executive Officer to PVC: Organisational Strategy and
Change.
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