UM Web Accessibility Working Group

Campus Web Accessibility and Adaptive Technology Coordinator position posted!

Job ID: 25609

The Web Accessibility Coordinator will work closely with campus administrators who address other accessibility issues to help identify and eliminate barriers to an open educational and working environment; their combined efforts will help further the Universitys position of leadership in all areas of accessibility. This Coordinator will:

- Support and advocate for the use and development of accessible interface technologies for people with disabilities;
- Provide leadership and professional technical expertise to ensure that University content is accessible on line and elsewhere to students, faculty, staff and community members with disabilities;
- Establish partnerships and ongoing communication with a wide variety of campus groups including centralized administrative groups and relatively autonomous groups within the University;
- Help define, develop, and communicate web accessibility best practices for the U-M environment;
- Make recommendations for continued institutional program expansion and development;
- And provide administrative support and direction to the campus units involved in web development.
- Develop a systematic training program for faculty, staff, and students in web accessibility practices and opportunities;
- Promote and communicate activities and related programs;
- Coordinate with others in all areas of accessibility.

October Meeting

We will meet on Tuesday, October 7 from 1:00-2:30 in Room 100 of Hatcher Library.

Our meeting topic will be creating accessible PDFs, including text-only versions. Once we all know how to do these things, how can we help others learn how?

Marc Williams of Rackham has agreed to share his know-how on accessible PDFs. If you have expertise of your own, please come prepared to share it.

No September WAWG Meeting

There will be no September WAWG Meeting. We decided to skip Sept because we all get so busy at the start of the semester. Our next meeting will be Tuesday, October 7th.

August meeting minutes have been uploaded to our CTools site and sent out to members.

Marc Williams also added some great links on creating accessible PDF documents to the CTools Wiki, and I also added them to the Resources section of our CTools site.

August 2008 WAWG Meeting

We will meet next Tuesday, August 5 from 1:00-2:30 in Room 100 of Hatcher Library.

Unfortunately, our student intern's laptop that has WindowEyes installed on it is still broken, so she won't be able to demonstrate it for us.

Here is what I thought we could do instead: We could read the accessibility evaluation reports she has done so far before the meeting, then discuss them in the meeting. Jennifer will be there to answer questions. I think this will be very useful, especially for the people who work in the units that she evaluated.

Reports can be found on the joinable CTools site "UM Web Accessibility" under Resources -> 2008 Summer Intern Website Evaluations.

Please let me know if there is anything else you would like to add to the agenda. See you Tuesday,

-Patty

WAWG Update

I have a few things to communicate to the group:

-Next Meeting: July 8 from 12:30 - 2:00 in 100 N Hatcher. Our visually-impaired summer intern (Jennifer) will demonstrate using the web using adaptive technology.

-Jennifer has already finished evaluating two member-volunteered sites for accessibility. I have posted her reports, along with her methodology, to our CTools site under Resources -> 2008 Summer Intern Website Evaluations.

-I spoke to a member of Access UM today, and the job description for the UM Web Accessibility & Adaptive Technology Coordinator has been approved! Davie Lampe is meeting with Provost Teresa Sullivan today to work out classification and salary details. They hope to have the position posted within two weeks! The job description is also posted to our CTools site under Resources -> Access UM.

-I am heading to East Lansing this evening for the CIC IT Accessibility & Usability Workshop. I will be updating them on what is happening at UM, and attending as many sessions as possible. I will report back at our next meeting.

-Patty

July WAWG Meeting Time/Date Change and Agenda

Because many people take the first week of July off, we will meet on Tuesday, July 8 from 12:30 - 2:00 in 100 N Hatcher instead. Please note the time change for July only.

Our student intern Jennifer has agreed to demonstrate accessibility testing using adaptive technology for us during that meeting. We will attempt to video-tape the demo for future use.

In our meeting yesterday we discussed and prioritized Jennifer's projects. Jennifer is easy to work with and very forthcoming on her experience using UM websites with adaptive technology. She is researching accessibility guidelines and developing a best practices checklist (e.g., things that should be on every page) to use during testing.

And a reminder: The CIC IT Accessibility/Usability Workshop will be held June 18-19 at MSU. Register by June 6 at http://www.outreach.msu.edu/events/cicitau/

I will attend and provide a summary to our group in an upcoming meeting. Anyone wishing to carpool please contact me.

-Patty

CIC IT Accessibility/Usability Workshop at MSU

http://www.outreach.msu.edu/events/cicitau/
Register by June 6.

June WAWG Meeting

The Web Accessibility Working Group will meet tomorrow (Tuesday) June 3 from 1:00-2:30 in 100 North Hatcher Library. We will meet our new intern, Jennifer Tatomir, and talk about her summer projects for the WAWG. The following units have indicated that they would like her to do an accessibility review of their site:

CTools
Division of Student Affairs
Rackham
School of Education
School of Public Health
University Gateway

We will also discuss the June Committee on Institutional Cooperation IT Accessibility and Usability Workshop.

May WAWG Meeting

The next WAWG meeting will take place on Tuesday, May 13 from 1:00 to 2:30 PM in 100 North Hatcher. This is one week later than usual due to Enriching Scholarship. Two agenda items:

1) Update from our meeting with the Vice President for Communication's Web Access Committee meeting.

2) Round Table Discussion. Please come prepared to talk about the following:

-How does your department define accessible?
-Does your department attempt to comply with a particular standard, priority level, etc.?
-What specific tools do you use to measure success?
-What is your favorite tool?
-One tip you could offer...

Feel free to join us if you don't have answers to these questions and just want to hear what others have to say.

-Patty

May Meeting Rescheduled

We need to reschedule our May meeting to the 2nd Tuesday (5/13) because the first Tuesday falls during Enriching Scholarship.

April WAWG Meeting

The April WAWG meeting will be on Tuesday, April 1st in 100 North Hatcher from 1:00-2:30. Agenda:

-Discuss the upcoming meeting with the Provost's committee looking into Web Accessibility issues and how we can best communicate the scope of the campus-wide problem to them.

-Work to build a table of contents for the accessibility site we'd want to see, using our Wiki.

-Anything else members would like to discuss.

March Brown Bag

March meeting will be Thursday March 6th from 1:00-2:30 PM in 2610 Crossroads, the School of Public Health. This is the very first room we met in. SPH is at 109 Observatory Street. Go into the main entrance, and go up the stairs to your right. The "video conferencing room" is at the top of the stairs. There will be a sign up.

Registration is not required, but appreciated at
http://sitemaker.umich.edu/webaccess/home

Agenda for March 6th meeting:
-Two people voted for "Aggregating and evaluating resources"
-Two people voted for "Provost's Committee on web accessibility"
-Hopefully we can also talk about subcommittees

Future meetings will continue to be held once a month (1st Tuesday at 1:00 PM, except for March)

Brown Bag Session

Our first Brown Bag Session will be held February 5th from 1:00-2:30 PM in 100 North Hatcher.

You can register at our SiteMaker site,
http://sitemaker.umich.edu/webaccess/home

The first session is intended for our group and other interested participants - e.g., UM web folks who are already concerned about web accessibility. Topics (whatever we can get through in the time allotted) are as follows:

-Top 10 best practices
-Top 10 worst offenses
-Overview and comparison of the various standards
-The art of interpreting accessibility checker reports (this could allow us a chance to critique each other's sites)
-Automating the process of changing from table-based to CSS-based layouts
-Tools and strategies
-CTools/SiteMaker

At the Feb 5th meeting we will also identify working groups, sub groups, central funding or volunteer funding and share tools.

Web Accessibility Brainstorming Meeting - Location Change

The location for the Jan 15th meeting has been changed:

Hatcher Graduate Library
Hatcher North, 1st floor, room 100

(If you enter the library from the Diag. entrance, it will be the only
room on the left side of the entrance hall)

Library location map

Web Accessibility Brainstorming Meeting 1/15/08

All interested parties should feel free to attend our UM Web Accessibility Working Group brainstorming meeting to plan an upcoming brownbag series. The meeting will be held on Jan. 15th from 1:00-2:30 PM.

You are free to drop in, and can also register on the SiteMaker site: http://sitemaker.umich.edu/webaccess/home

The meeting location is 1655 Crossroads at the School of Public Health. The SPH is at the corner of Observatory and Washington Heights. Room 1655 is in the same building as our last two meetings. Come in the main entrance, veer right, and head back towards the Crossroads Cafe. It is labeled "Auditorium 4" and it is just before the glass display case on the right.

Contact Patty Bradley (pattyb@umich.edu) for more information.