Big Ten Plus IT Accessibility Interest Group 2005 Meeting

Disability Resources and Educational Services (DRES)

University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign

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Overview

Goal

To initiate a dialog among CIC institutions regarding the best methods to achieve IT accessibility for persons with disabilities at our respective institutions

Workshop Objectives

Tenative Agenda

Thursday, July 21st

12:00-1:00 Lunch (Lunch provided by UIUC)
Welcome to workshop (Brad Hedrick, DRES Director)
Opening remarks from Dean Tanya Gallagher, College of Applied Life Studies
Goals of conference (Sue Lewis, CITES)
1:00-2:45 Brief overview of each campus' IT accessibility including (~10 minutes per institution):
Moderator: Sue Lewis
Policy development and implementation
Standards/best practices
Campus model for systemic implementation and support
Accessible content authoring tools
Accessibility auditing tools
Purchasing language regarding accessibility criteria
Presentations
2:45-3:00 Break
Refreshments
3:00-3:30 Moving IT Accessibility Forward
Presenter: Philip Kragnes, Minnesota
Setting campus standards
Setting policies and procedures
Buy-in and dissemination
3:30-4:00 Functional versus Technical Web Accessibility
Presenter: Jon Gunderson, UIUC
What is functional accessibility?
How does complying with accessibility standards meet the functional accessibility needs of people with disabilities?
What are the barriers to acheiving functional accessibility?
What are the benefits of functional design to everyone?
4:00-5:00 Tools being Developed at UIUC to Support Functional Accessibility
Presenter: Jon Gunderson, UIUC
Illinois Accessible Web Publishing Wizard for Microsoft Office®
Mozilla Accessibility Extension
Web Accessibility Management Tool
Web Accessibility Visualization Tool
6:30 Dinner at local restaurant

Friday, July 22nd

Note: Telephone conferencing capabilities will be available for Friday sessions for people with specialized interests in accessibility. Call in numbers: Champaign/Urbana 265-6999 or toll free 866-263-1405.

8:00-8:30 Continental Breakfast
Review of Goals (Sue Lewis)
8:30-8:45 Remarks by Peter Siegel
8:45-9:45 Learning Management System Accessibility Discussion
Moderator: Jon Gunderson
Discussion of accessibility features and problems
Current efforts and resources
Related links:
Summary of key issues and next steps
  1. CIC Learning Technology Initative (LTI): Procurement, coordination (Ed Garay)
    2. Partnerships between institutions
    • Partnerships need to include both disability and Ed tech staff
    • WebCT: UIUC, Minn, Purdue
    • Desire2Learn: Ohio State, Iowa, Wisconsin (Joe Wheaton)
    • Blackboard: UIC, UIS, Northwestern (Ed Garay)
    • Sakai: Michigan, Indiana (Michael Elledge)
    • Angel: MSU, Penn State (Christian Vinten-Johansen, Charmane Corcoran)
  2. Mellon proposal on Learning System accessibility, Sakai (Michael Elledge, Peter Siegel)
  3. Learning module extensions is an important future issue
9:45-10:00 Break
10:00-10:45 Enterprise Management Systems Accessibility Discussion
Moderator: Jon Gunderson
Discussion of accessibility features and problems
Current efforts and resources
Related links:
Summary of key issues and next steps
  1. Peoplesoft: Ohio State (HR, Finance only), Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota (video tape), Iowa
  2. SCT: UIUC, UIC, UIS
  3. Kuali: MSU
  4. Players: Human Resources, Financial, Admissions, Bursar, CIO
  5. Developer conference on AT and HR
  6. Strategies: Trade show demonstrations to PeopleSoft and SCT managers/developers on hands on accessibility problems
  7. Gartner Conference or Educause in Orlando meetings with Peopledoft and SCT: Bob Kalal, Jason Heimbaugh and Jon Gunderson
  8. Partnership with usability people or testing
  9. Fundamental design issues need to be addressed in RFP requirements
10:45-11:00 Break
11:00-12:00 Electronic Library Resources Accessibility Discussion
Moderator: Jon Gunderson
Accessibility features and problems of
  • Bibliographic databases
  • Resource checkout
  • Electronic reserve resources
Current efforts and resources
Electronic text and access to print materials
Summary of key issues and next steps
  1. Bibliographic engine: ERIC has problems, other search engines are more usable
    • Similar to ERP problems, big companies
    • Servers are owned by companies, schools authenticate to the server
    • Many vendors
    • Minnesota is development of a state wide system, accessibility is suppose to be a part of the system
  2. Print accessibility problems:
    • PDF issues for reserves: common problem
    • Copyright issues in sharing information
    • Texas Book Exchange aand Bookshare: quality issues
    • Indiana has a tool to create materials in mutliple formats
    • Google project at Michigan, Standford, Oxford, Harvard, is it accessible? currently is not accessible, but being considered (TIFF files)
  3. CIC Library Groups: Genny Singleton
  4. Identify key database (Sue Lewis, Bob Kalal, Michael Elledge, Dean Brusnighan), most complaints and ones the most
  5. Library CIC committees representation and library procurement (Sue Lewis)
  6. Student survey on library services (just an idea)
  7. Publisher accessibility advocacy
  8. Digital library group (local campus, Sue Lewis, Bob Kalal)
12:00-1:00 Lunch (Lunch provided by UIUC)
1:00-2:00 Web Authoring and Management Accessibility Discussion
Moderator: Jon Gunderson
Dreamweaver, Frontpage and Composer
Content management systems
PDF and Flash
Summary of key issues and next steps
  1. Workshops on campus accessibility: Michigan, Purdue, Minnesota, UIUC
  2. Identifying key web developers
  3. Content management systems
    • Content providers are non-technical
    • Templates can include accessibility
    • Decentralized decision making process, so many system used
    • Penn State using open source PLUME and ZOPE, editor can be configured
    • One model is a technical reviewer to approve something before it is published in a CMS
    • CS Students like to do things using alot of tricks, and often get web development jobs on campus
    • Development of resource on accessible CMS system (Christian, John Howard, Jon Gunderson)
  4. Instructors do not
    • No barriers to content
    • Tools need to support accessibility by default
    • HTML templates for authoring tools
  5. What is an accessible format?
    • Need more than just plan text
    • Structured document like HTML
  6. Repository of Dreamweaver templates that support accessibility
  7. What do we want to tell Macromedia?
    • Flash tools accessibility
  8. Evaluaton and tracking tools
    • WebExact: Good start
    • Lift-oneline/Desktop: HTML conformance, lower end user checks and higher ed user checks. Webmasters don't like the tools. We want to be easy stuff. Automatic coding.
    • UIC is looking for a tool
    • ACTION: Product comparison table (Jon Howard, Joe Wheaton)
2:00-2:15 Break
2:15-3:55 Process for Ongoing Engagement
Moderators: Sue Lewis and Brad Hedrick
Accessibility concerns common to our universities
Strategies for addressing those concerns
Resources needed
Further collaborative efforts
Summary of key issues and next steps
  1. CIC Process to becoming a group
    • Send informal charter to Barb Allen
    • Get together at the Tech Forum
    • Need to define goals of the group
  2. Accessibility Web Best Practices
    • Jon Gunderson, Michael Elledge, Christian Vinten-Johansen, Philip Kragnes, Joe Wheaton and Charmane
    • Michael Elledge look for an accessible wiki
  3. Next meeting
    • Action: Everyone figure out people we should invite to the group
    • Video conference capability
    • Potentially Minnesota
  4. Usability
    • Michael Elledge, Dean , David, Brad Hedrick, Pam
    • Setup requirements of populations and testing proceedures
3:55-4:00 Closing remarks (Sue Lewis and Brad Hedrick)

Location

Notes