The Sunflower to begin livestreaming SGA meetings

Selena Favela

Student senators listen to the officer address at the beginning of the first SGA meeting of the year.

The live stream of the Student Government Association’s weekly meetings has found a new home. Starting Oct. 4, the live stream will be available on The Sunflower’s Facebook page.

SGA announced on Wednesday that they will no longer be livestreaming Student Senate meetings. SGA is also ending its weekly “Engage with Paige” sessions on Facebook.

Student Body President Paige Hungate said the university requires SGA’s publications to be in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

“Live streams are not ADA compliant because it doesn’t have automatically-generated captioning,” Hungate said.

SGA will be teaming up with the Media Resource Center to record meetings and make sure they are ADA compliant. Hungate said SGA will make the videos available soon after meetings.

“We’ll upload them to YouTube when they get captions,” Hungate said.

On July 29, 2016, the university entered into an agreement with the National Federation of the Blind in response to complaints filed by Emily Schlenker, a blind pre-med student.

Schlenker reported in March of 2016 that Wichita State discriminated against her. She claimed that Wichita State violated the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 by failing to provide accessible electronic and information technology and computer workstations. She also claimed that the university failed to provide accessible class materials, coursework, and tests to blind students in a time and manner equal to that of sighted students.

Terms of the agreement included appointing an accessibility coordinator to oversee and report disability access issues, making the university’s library and websites more accessible, and supplying equipment and course materials to blind students.

The university also agreed to follow the ADA’s accessibility standards with its publications and web content.