Teleconference Details

• Scott & Will in charge of accessibility from Blackboard
• Update on the letter to Blackboard
• Possibility of a Support/QA member joining our discussion (Scott & Will)
• Identify topics to be discussed with support/QA teams (discussion continued).

Blackboard/WebCT Accessibility teleconference minutes 05/07/2007
Scribe: Kevin Price & Hadi Rangin

Next Meeting

• Date: Monday May 21, 2007
• Time: 2:30 PM EDT; 1:30 PM CDT; 12:30 PM MDT; 11:30 AM PDT
• Phone: 217 265-8030
• Scribe: TBD

Attendees

• Scott Whitmore, Blackboard
• Jon Gunderson, , University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign
• Phil Kragnes, University of Minnesota
• Laurie Harrison, University of toronto
• Kevin Price, University of Illinois at Chicago
• Lisa Fiedor, North Carolina State University
• Don Amos, Pellissippi State Technical Community College
• Hadi Rangin, University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign

Regrets

• Terry Thompson, University of Washington

Discussion

Introduction of New Blackboard Accessibility Support (Scott Whitmore)

Jon Gunderson asked about key projects that Scott and William will be working with the transition from Robert Dumas.

Scott Whitmore said that there has been approval for visits to work with the development team concerning accessibility and that the mandate is to do customer groups to help toward accessibility.

Hadi asked about the project time that would be needed and Scott replied that it still needs to be determined. Martha Cooley is the interface designer that will be determining those issues.

Hadi asked who will be our main accessibility contact that we would be dealing with and Scott said it would be him.

Scott reiterated that customer groups would be used for the new release. Jon asked if there would be external reviewers for accessibility and Scott said only internal resources will be used toward accessibility.

Phil Kragnes asked whether we will be able to access the demo server for the development process. Scott was not sure but would look into it *. Hadi echoed how important it would to have access to the servers.

There are several people from Universities who have signed the Blackboard letter, check out http://cita.uiuc.edu/collaborate/webct/ for the full list.

Lisa Fielder is working on meeting with the administration at North Carolina State University. Don Amos at Pellissippi State is also working on it at his college.

Hadi asked if we should set another deadline. Jon thinks we should wait until after our next meeting to set a deadline. He thinks we should have 20-30 letters to send before we submit them.

*Jon asked the group to ask other colleges and universities that we have contacts with to sign the letter. Robert Dumas’s name is on the letter but Scott mentioned that it should be okay to leave it.

Hadi mentioned that there was an oral agreement earlier that there would be training for the developers. Scott said he will have to follow up on this and said the perfect time for training would be in D.C. in August.

Jon asked if at this point in the development if there was no code and only working on requirements of the next version. Scott agreed that 7.4 was not in coding stage yet. Version 7.4 includes only include changing a few tools around the Gradebook part.

Jon offered Scott and the development team to be involved with the two day Aria training in June. Jon is following up to make sure the registration is up for this event. Also offered the Universal design training that is coming up. Jon will send out the announcements for the training.

Scott will follow up to see if they can get involved with the training.

Hadi mentioned that Robert had agreed to have the QA team joining our Accessibility meetings. Scott is waiting on the lists of the QA who signed up to be involved and will follow up.

Hadi will follow-up and get a summary to Scott on what we talked about to be included in the QA.

Phil Kragnes mentioned that David Gaskin is VP form Marketing, Design, and support staff that would be promoting accessibility.

Jon and Hadi were invited to the meeting 5-8-07 to discuss the accessibility of Gradebook with the Beta team to get feedback.

Hadi asked since they weren’t coding what would be the best way to get involved and Scott mentioned that it is important to establish relationships with the product managers to get accessibility built into the development process.

Scott mentioned that new release of Gradebook will have to have a work around in the grid view mode because they couldn’t get the JAVA script accessible for the grid view. Jon believed if the developers knew about Aria then the Gradebook could be completed without creating two versions of the grid view.

Scott asked more about Aria. Aria is now supported by Window-Eyes, JAWS, Firefox, IBM, and it is a developing specification that hasn’t been fully released. The Blackboard Developers could be useful in learning Aria and help make the specifications better.

The next meeting is scheduled for May 21, 2007. Time is too be determined to insure as many people as possible can make it.

Action Items

• Scott will follow up with invitation of one or two of us to D.C. in August for awareness and training
• Scot will follow up with the QA department to find out who is going to join our discussion group
• Jon will send out the announcements for Web 2.0 the training workshop
• Scott will follow up to see if they can get involved with the training
• Hadi sends Scott the list of questions/concerns to be discussed with QA and Suppport teams