Blackboard Accessibility Interest Group

Campus Information Technologies and Educational Services (CITES) and Disability Resources and Educational Services (DRES)

University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign

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Teleconference Details

Date: 2007-05-21

Time: 2:30 PM EDT; 1:30 PM CDT; 12:30 PM MDT; 11:30 AM PDT

Agenda

Minutes

Blackboard/WebCT Accessibility teleconference minutes 05/21/2007

Scribe: Terry Thompson & Hadi Rangin




Next Meeting




Attendees




Regrets




Discussion



Jon provided an update on the letters to Blackboard. To date, 11 letters
have been received. A few more are expected, and Jon is currently engaged in
a discussion with SLATE (a Blackboard users group) which might result in
additional letters. His hope is to send the letters out around Memorial Day.



Scott confirmed an interest in inviting one or two of us to D.C. in August
to provide accessibility awareness and training. Blackboard's Product
Management team is organizing the event, and they want to get a more
complete understanding of accessibility in preparation for next generation
development. They would particularly build time into the event to meet and
discuss accessibility with QA and developers. By the next meeting, Scott
says he should have specific dates and an agenda
Scott provided an update on his efforts to get QA and Support to participate
in our group. He has identified a specific contact within Support who is
interested either in participating, or in delegating to a TSM. Scott will
send Hadi his contact's name and email and Hadi will send him the meeting
schedule.



QA hasn't been as prompt in responding. Scott has worked his way
up to a QA manager and is going to try to follow up with that person to try
to identify a point person.



Hadi asked Scott whether anyone from Blackboard would be attending the Web
2.0 workshop that Jon is offering at UIUC. By meeting's end Scott confirmed
that he has the details about that event and will see if he can get the
budget approval for someone to receive in that training.



Jon asked Scott whether there are other development groups where we could be
involved, since there are currently three of us all involved in Gradebook,
which seems like an efficient distribution of our limited resources (all our
peas in one pod).  Scott said he's not aware of any other customer groups,
and explained that most development is currently focused on the
architectural aspects of next generation products. Customer groups will
follow later. Scott said it was OK to mention publicly that we are
participating on the Product Development Partners teams for Gradebook. 



Terry asked for clarification regarding the logistical details of the merger
of WebCT and Blackboard Interest Groups. Scott proposed setting aside time
at BBWorld in Boston in July to get input from Blackboard on the merger, but
no one present from the Accessibility group is planning to attend BBWorld
this year. Hadi intends to merge the discussion lists and websites before
the next meeting, and plans to keep scenarios, video clips, and other
developed resources online for historical purposes. 



Terry asked whether there was value in continuing our efforts to evaluate
and/or document accessibility issues with current products. Scott said we
were more likely to have an influence on next generation development.



Terry also pointed out the benefit of tracking problems, solutions, and
workarounds, not just for the purpose of influencing Blackboard, but as a
resource for people in the field who are working to provide access to
students with disabilities. Jon pointed out several complications in
building and maintaining a database like this (e.g., issues vary across
product versions, too few people participating) and suggested that a
repository like this would be better if maintained by Blackboard, since they
have more resources, are on the front line of support for their products and
therefore are likely to be contacted about accessibility issues, and are the
logical first stop for people looking for this information.



Regarding the current WebCT issue tracking system, Hadi explained that the
system maintained by UIUC was not in synch with the system that Blackboard
used, and as a result Robert hadn't actively used the UIUC system to close
issues after they had been resolved. He asked Scott if he would be able to
look through the open issues and determine whether they had been resolved.



Scott said he would look through the huge stack of materials that Robert had
left him and see if there was relevant information there.



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