Date: March 29, 2007
To: Someone in Blackboard management
From: Blackboard Accessibility Interest Group Educational technology Officers
RE: Blackboard disability access policies, resources and services
Partnership Background
In October of 2004 a group of people representing several universities using
WebCT, including the University of Illinois, University of Minnesota and Purdue
University, created a whitepaper on the accessibility issues and feature
enhancements needed to improve the accessibility of Blackboard Vista
Enterprise (WebCT Vista 4). The Interest Group has grown to over 30
institutions and has a productive relationship with Blackboard through Robert
Dumas to improve the accessibility of the Blackboard Vista Enterprise product.
This relationship has been very productive and we would like to commend the
work of Robert Dumas in working with the Interest Group and within Blackboard
to achieve the improvements in accessibility of the Vista Enterprise product line.
But development is only one aspect of accessibility and we like to see
accessibility extended to include other divisions within Blackboard including
customer support services, quality assurance and instructional content
development.
Expanding the Partnership with Blackboard
 Establishment, review and comment on accessibility design techniques for
meeting Section 508 and W3C Web Content Accessibility Guideline for
Blackboard product development.

Proposed new features that support instructors evaluating and creating
accessible instructional content.

Develop accessibility guidelines for third party add-ins to Blackboard
products and the development of an Blackboard accessibility logo
program for products that meet the guidelines.

The identification of an accessibility representative from the Blackboard
Quality Assurance group to meet on a regular basis with the Interest
Group to develop functional accessibility quality assurance procedures
and policies.

The identification of an accessibility representative from the Blackboard
Customer Support group to meet on a regular basis with the Interest
Group to develop policies and procedures on how to support customers
with disabilities. \
Recommendation
We recommend that Blackboard representatives work with the Blackboard
Accessibility Interest Group to expand the current relationship to address the
above issues to make Blackboard the premier Course Management System for
accessibility. Please respond to this letter with an indication of your plans to
address the above issues. We ask that you contact Dr. Jon Gunderson at the
University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign and the Blackboard Accessibility
Interest Group to discuss the details of this request and to help you in formulating
your response to us. We look forward to seeing the accessibility improvements
in the resources and services offered by Blackboard, this will be a great benefit to
our students, faculty and staff with disabilities who use your products and
services.
Sincerely,
List of Chief Educational Technology Officers