UDAC Minutes – 3-2-2011
The Committee on Universal Design and Accessibility (UDAC)
(for campus communications & computing)
A sub-committee of the Chancellors’ Advisory Committee on Program Access
C4C conference room (N215), 2:00 – 3:30
Attending:
Kevin Crafts - Webcomm
Clayton Lewis - CSCI
Howard Kramer - Disability Services
David Sprouse - President’s office
Mark Knowles - ALTEC
JP Harris - Disability Services
Fanchon Finucane - PBA
Erika Klein - Libraries
Vijay Patel - Housing
Duncan McBogg - ITS
Grant Matheny - ASSETT
Jane Zheng - Continuing Ed
Debra Warren - Continuing Ed
Cath Stager-Kilcommons - Disability Services
Introductions
Website Competition
20-25 submissions
Ememo from Larry Levine came out today
Some submissions from students after buff bulletin
CIO asked us to move the deadline back to next Friday. Compromise: Next Monday.
Have gotten submissions from the Denver campus
Vijay’s site nominated 3 times (none by Vijay!)
Have four people outside committee interested in judging:
- LeeAnn Baronett
- Deb Keyek-Franssen
- Joe Kuster
- Erika Klein (present at this meeting)
David: Will we distribute the websites among the judges?
Howard: We’ll need some sort of process
Howard: Run all websites through accessibility checker, send back sites with 5-6 errors to give
depts chance to correct (maybe take off a couple of points for this) - Generates potential for
immediate improvement.
It was decided later that due to time constraints we didn’t have time to allow
Assign a couple people to do initial screening?
Kevin: For previous contest: broke sites up among the judges to do initial eliminations, and
promotes sites not eliminated to a wider judging audience. (For conflicts of interest like housing,
put those into a non-Vijay group.)
Howard: Two people to a group? Kevin: Three? Each group gets to look at ten sites.
Vijay: Need a checklist. Howard: Modified AIR judging form. Covers beyond just accessibility.
Modifications:
- No Knobility logo
- Howard, Vijay, JP will take a look at it, get it back by this coming Monday.
Erika: is it online? Howard will make sure it is.
Fanchon: Will we be looking at performance, design, timeliness, mobile-compatibility, etc?
Howard: Many of those are captured by the categories on the website
JP: “Overall Site Quality” category contains some of these
Vijay: Do some type of simple usability test. Ask site owners what the audience is.
Howard: Do basic tests for screening out some sites initially
Vijay: We may not know their audience, and judge incorrectly based on that. What we think is
an issue may not be one for the target audience.
Howard: Allow owners to respond/explain in this case?
Vijay: Create minimum criteria for first round of judging on AIR form.
Howard: Assign groups now?
1. Kevin, Vijay, Grant
2. Duncan, Erika, Clayton
3. JP, Mark K, Fanchon
4. Cath, David S, Jane
5. Debra, LeeAnn Baronet, Joe Kuster
Deb Keyek-Franssen
6. Jeff Foster (UCCS), , Howard (this will either be a 3rd group or will split
members among other groups depending on nominations received).
Howard will put himself wherever needed to fill out groups.
Have money from CIO office for prizes. What should the prizes be?
Vijay: Give a C4C lunch gift certificate
*Vijay will look into lunch gift certificate from housing.
Fanchon: Offer a this-or-that prize option (to address David’s point that winners may not be on
Boulder campus).
Kevin: Who wouldn’t want to come see the Epcott Center of food?!
*One free lunch per award + Plaque or trophy
*Itunes was another option discussed or a Starbucks gift card.
*For sites who make it to the last round, Howard will ask the number of people on the web
design team so that we can plan prizes accordingly.
We should also offer alternatives to winners. For example, if someone doesn’t want a gift
certificate for C4C dining.
Vijay: Basketball ticket?
*Howard will look into this. JP suggests that Ray in DS may have some athletics connections.
One person had asked whether there would be something done around the worst website.
Cath: Hard for people to distinguish after the fact whether the website they saw was awarded for
‘good’ or ‘bad’
David: Should the nominator get something?
Kevin: There isn’t a whole lot of precedent for that.
Duncan: Should at least keep the nominator in the loop as to whether the website they
nominated won.
Re-checked the bulletin that was sent out to confirm that it doesn’t imply that the nominator will
get anything. (It doesn’t.)
Award will go to webmaster(s)
Should send out another buff bulletin looking for judges? Probably not needed.
Deadline for final judging: March 25.
Location for training day on Wed. March 30th?
- Large 50+ seat classroom would be optimal.
- Reserved center room of Glenn Miller ballroom, but this isn’t ideal for teaching
- Contacted ATLAS, Business School, no luck so far.
- Room on 6th floor of ARCE suggested by Kevin. (Has projector and at least seating for 50)
- Would Wolf Law work? (Trial Room.) Howard will contact them.
(Update: Howard has contacted them and nothing is available)
Cath has two students willing to do demos of accessibility features on their phones.
Duncan is still going to get a document camera for the event.
*Howard – contact press for coverage of awards & event.
Confirmed award day agenda.
- Still have to confirm what website triage session will look like.
Howard: Would like to provide some sort of feedback/scores to each site the judges look at.
Narrative, maybe?
Fanchon: *Give them the filled-out AIM judging form with a short paragraph explanation at the
end.
For next year, have a most improved award.
Other Items:
David: has new accessible business cards for Cath’s students to check. 500 card minimum
order = $65, but a large bulk order might allow a discount
Can committee look over new System portal before it goes live?
Kevin: May not be much that can be changed, as this is a PeopleSoft product, which is difficult
to modify.
Discussion of the new portal and its underpinnings, not summarized here for brevity’s sake.
David: Does it make sense to check it over, given those difficulties? Kevin and Cath: Should at
least look over it and provide recommendations to highlight the issues and maybe encourage
accessibility-focused development.
Vijay: Flash applications being built on top of the enterprise Oracle architecture (e.g. the
calendar section of my.cu.edu). Might be a way to create a better frontend.
David: Scott Munsen is developer on a committee making decisions about the portal.
Vijay: Admissions app impossible to navigate only by keyboard. Kevin: App was developed by
third party.
Cath: Biology dept considering changing curriculum due to inaccessibility of MasteringBiology
website. Pearson (who owns MasteringBiology) is now willing to do most anything to make their
product usable for them because of this. Maybe this approach can be used with PeopleSoft?
*Howard: include a 508 compliance provision in procurement process for new software
applications? Will bring this to Larry.
Cath: New ISIS system not usable by blind students. Took one student 2 hours to register for
classes even with a sighted person helping.
Vijay: Differences between laws for job-required software vs. public-facing websites?
Duncan: Is there any entity that enforces this sort of compliance? -> This is generally handled
by federal action.
*Contact Mike Roseberry about portal accessibility issues.
CU Homepage:
Kevin: Webcomm aware of issues. What’s currently available is not meant as a full refresh of
the site. It’s primarily the result of a quick effort to get the branding enabled. Working with ITS to
enable a CMS backend to manage the homepage (WWW Next Gen project). Eventually, this
will also extend to a common good environment. Will likely be using Drupal 7.
Deadline for when judging is done?
Howard: Aim for 25th of March. Meeting scheduled for Wednesday, March 23rd, 1:00, location
tba.
Discussion of how many sites each group should pass on to the larger group:
May not be enough time to allow websites that fail the original weeding stage to improve.
Kevin: Have a ‘most improved’ award next year?