Teleconference Details

D2L Accessibility Teleconference Minutes 09/21/2007
Scribe: Joe Wheaton

Next meeting

• Date: Friday October 5, 2007
• Time: 2:00 PM EDT; 1:00 PM CDT
• Phone: TBD
• Frequency: Every 2 weeks

Attendees

• Donald Amos
• Hadi Rangin
• Mark Felix
• Janna Cameron
• Joe Wheaton

Discussion

Janna asked when this study might be done, and it will depend on when OSU and U of Arizona can get their IRB approval.
Joe will look up the old IRB and process it. Mark wasn't sure when Arizona could do it.
Joe thought maybe late October or early November, although this will depend on IRB approval.

Hadi noted the U of Illinois is not yet on D2L and Mark said he would set up a test account at U of A.

Hadi suggested we recruit students with physical disabilities, that is, keyboard users.

Hadi suggested that when we are evaluating D2L that we should be using the edition in development, not the current edition, so that problems can be fixed before the new edition comes out. We want to catch problems in the development stage, not identify existing problems, and we want to make sure accessibility is being addressed in the upcoming versions. Janna will try to do this, but noted that many controls are used across tools (the widgets used to insert a date, for example, are the same in all tools). Janna will check on getting us onto a development server.

The study

Hadi suggested we try to use students with various disabilities, not just students who are blind. Prior to testing we need to discover their proficiency in the AT they are using and their experience with D2L.

We need to measure the following:

1. Time it takes to complete a task. Although using certain AT can be inherently slower than not using the AT, the time difference between users with AT and those without should only reflect that AT difference, not the time it takes to do the task. For example, a person using JAWS must wait for JAWS to read the page, but once the page is read, doing the task should take approximately the same amount of time of that of a non-AT user.
2. The steps people use to accomplish the task. What strategies do they use? How do they get around? Do they have false tarts? Can they complete the task at all?

We started to go through the scenarios, but we ran out of time. Mark noted we could reduce the number of grade items on Scenario 1 to no more than 20. Joe said that Scenario 2, Grades - Read class statistics, could be eliminated.

Action items

Read through the scenarios (attached for those who don't have them) and determine the following:

1. Which scenarios can be eliminated?
2. Are there any of the components of (e.g, "Starting states") that can be modified?