UniversityofColoradoatBoulder
Universal Design & Accessibility for campus communications & computing
(a sub-committee of the Chancellor’s committee on Program Accessibility)
Meeting Minutes
June 4, 2010
2:00 p.m. –3:15 p.m.
Program Accessibility Committee
Universal Design & Accessibility
Attending: Amelia Dickerson, Duncan McBogg, Fanchon F. Finucane, Jeff Greene, John Harris,
Mark A. Knowles, Mark Alan Inglis, Jane Zheng, Vijay Patel, Howard Kramer (Committee
Chair)
(* Denotes that discussion item requires a follow-up action)
1) Background: this is the first meeting or restart (the electronic access sub-committee of PAC
last met around February of 2008) of this committee. Howard offered that the mission or
focus of the committee was to help ensure and improve usability and accessibility of campus
computer and communication systems, including web pages, email, electronic
communications such as online surveys, classroom media, campus-wide information
systems, etc. It was proposed that the committee begin with the issue of captioning
multimedia. However, feedback on issues to address and how to configure committee were
solicited.
2) A number of possible issues in addition to address in addition to captioning were suggested,
including:






Lab Accessibility (Jeff)
Standards / guidelines for using common tools used on campus such as zoomerang
(online survey tool).
o Zoomerang is being used by certain schools, even though it is not accessible.
(Amelia)
Similar to above, 508 procurement guidelines for purchase / development of campuswide systems
Standards for operations such as lecture capture (Duncan)
Develop Web/UD & accessibility support and resources (Howard)
Evaluation of Campus Web Systems (Howard)
3) Discussion regarding Captioning Situation on Campus

Not a broad technical solution on campus

Duncan recommends a standard across campus for captioning

Amelia would like a unified effort for captioning and other electronic tools on campus

JP would be interested in evaluations to determine what works, what doesn't work

Other universities centralize captioning
Mark asked if there were guidelines or policies for technology access

Guidelines for 508 accessibility are there on the webcom site, but they are not very
visible (http://www.colorado.edu/webcom/access/)

Howard says the law says "multimedia should be captioned"

Duncan suggested there be a wiki to continue discussion

Howard says transcribing is the most difficult part of the captioning process
o http://www.automaticsync.com will take a media file and transcribe/caption it
o http://www.docsoft.com/ is a service that Stanford uses

Automatic sync charges
o $69 per media hour for captioning (transcript provided by school)
o $93 / per media hr for transcript only; $162 per media hour for transcription &
captioning

There was a discussion on cheaper ways to produce transcripts

Captioning technically should be being done on all multimedia used by a class
o This means iTunes U and all MediaSite recordings *should* be captioned
o Vijay – participating in iTunes U means greater public presence, greater
obligation to have captioning.
Amelia says a good resource for web accessibility development is:

http://www.webaim.org/
4) Action plan for captioning from Mark Werner and Mark Gammon

Rochelle Scott is working on documentation for how to turn on captioning

Dave Underwood – asked to get equipment & software to do captioning

Ensure Academic Media Services has hardware & software for embedding captioning

(Post rest of plan from Mark Werner)
5) Action Items
a) Mark K.? – going to conference next week; will bring back info
b) Duncan – will find out what the U. of Wisconsin (exemplary captioning/access
program?) does regarding captioning.
c) Mark I. – will also examine what other universities are doing.
d) Get input from deaf/hoh community – faculty in anthro dept (not a consumer) but spent
year in galludet – possible resource for committee.
e) Conduct demos of access issues such as use of screen reader.
f) Send out webaim & Web Comm resource web sites.
6) Other miscellaneous suggestions
a) Agenda is helpful – can bring other colleagues depending on topics
b) Open Source Caption tool in labs (Jeff)
7) Next Meeting
 Friday, June 25, 2:00 pm. – Education 143
8) Tentative Agenda Items
a) Demonstration of Screen Reader – Amelia
b) Report on fact finding as discussed above (captioning at other universities, conference
attendance, etc.)
c) Specific name & mission for committee?
d) Recruiting faculty to committee?
Minutes prepared by Howard Kramer & Jeff Greene – 6/23/10