Getting accessibility working for your organization - PSEWEB2013

Editor's Notes

• #4: Further points to mention:Founded by business leaders seeking to fill a skills gap, very collaborative, very connected to industry, and very cross-disciplinary.Largest post-secondary co-op program of its kind in the world sends our students across the globe. Also we have 160,900 alumni in 144 countries. Intellectual property ownership is a key part of our culture, people are used to owning their work, that sense of ownership pervades throughout all of our activities.Key takeaways for this slideuWaterloo is very distributed in resources, geography and intent. Our potential web maintainers number in the thousands.We have a culture born of a tension between independence and the need for effective collaboration.
• #5: WCAG 2.012 guidelines in 4 main categories:Perceivable OperableUnderstandableRobustEach guideline in WCAG 2.0 has a number of success criteria associated with itEach criterion has an associated level of compliance (Levels: A, AA, AAA)There are 41 success criteria in total16 apply to written content, 8 to graphics and photography (with some overlap)Key takeaways for this slideThe guidelines are clear with an unequivocal scope and deadline.
• #6: AODA sets out to provide universal access to your services and information.Often perceived as extra work, and a barrier to project completion.Standards, by their nature arise from the endeavor, not prior to it.Underlines the misconception that the web is something that gets ‘finished’It’s not new work; it’s codified best practice.All of the techniques arise from a user-focused perspective.Accessible websites are useable websites.Many of the techniques will improve search engine optimization (SEO).You must do the work now, save work later. Key takeaways for this slideClear guidelines, muddy message.Successfully communicating the requirements to your stakeholders involves underlining their relationship to best practice, already part of the work.I often say you can’t ‘add’ accessibility to your websites because it’s just as much work as doing it in the first place.There are benefits to pushing people past the Level A, and often NOT doing AAA is more work than meeting the requirement.NOTE: image is illustration of Stroop effect: interference with reaction time to a task by the information and presentation.
• #7: Existing training frameworks like Skills for the Electronic Workplace, what course content exists, can it be adapted. What are you requiring for access to key systems such as your WCMS?Knowing what your platform can do tells you what the scope of your work is. Becomes a very good incentive to bring people to a new system or platform.Choke points, like a development team, or central communications team need to be trained. Once they’re trained give them opportunities to train others, position as thought leaders for your organization and provide professional development opportunities.Standards = technical. This is not about filling out a checklist, it is about changing work processes, expecting staff capacity and expertise to complete the work in an effective way, and supporting that through training and leadership.Other items to mention:Re: Choke points: Creative Services is targeted for extra training, revised workflows and enhanced tools. They’re the source for the majority of print for our campus, they’re a priority for effort. Key takeaways for this slideAODA success criteria are mostly best practice, illuminating that for your content maintainers and platform developers is key. (e.g. Writing for the Web and Writing Accessible Web Content courses).Clearing the mud involves fostering and supporting expertise in your staff group. Try to follow the Learn one, do one, teach one model.
• #8: Academic units:Applied MathematicsCombinatorics & OptimizationPure MathematicsStatistics & Actuarial ScienceSchool of Computer ScienceThree people doing communications for it all
• #9: Within the faculty, there are three people who work on communications – our director, our communications and student engagement officer, and myself who is split between the Faculty and the School of Computer Science. It’s important that we act as champions and as a leadership team in providing other content maintainers, editors and authors, with assistance and resources outside of Communications and Public Affairs and our IST training and support team.It’s a bit hypocritical and hard justifying to someone that they need to take a certain number of training courses in order to help communicate messages through the web when you yourself have not done so and you’re a website administrator. It’s also extremely difficult to provide the correct information to those with questions when you haven't been exposed to the material.While the guidelines are set in stone, there is a phrase that is used that ends with ‘or best effort’, for us, this isn’t good enough. It’s like when you’re young and your mom makes your remake your bed because the first time you rushed through it and it’s not neat. If you had just done it right the first time, you wouldn’t have to go back and do it again. Ensuring that each step we take is the right step and each training session we offer answers to every and all questions saves us time in the long run. This includes sitting with those upper level administrators to make sure that they fully understand why we’re doing what we’re doing.We’re focusing on training and support. It’s not practical for 50 admin staff to take 2 hours here and then 6 weeks later 3 hours there to learn how to implement AODA regulations. Unless you do this everyday, you’re going to forget it. Instead, we’re working in house and with our central training team to create short to the point isessions that cover everything our staff need to know about the regulations from writing for the web to creating accessible content, we’re making sure that everyone understands why these regulations are important, how to comply, and has a hard copy with step by step instructions to take back to their desk. For this to work, everyone needs to fully understand why we’re doing it and that’s the first hurdle that as a faculty we’re in the middle of jumping.
• #10: We’re starting from the top and working our way down. Between general faculty level pages, all pages owned by the five academic units, and our researcher pages, that is more content than three people can handle. We’re starting with the faculty level and school level pages to make sure that the content that is most integral is most accessible. That includes utilizing the skills and resources of our computing facilities to run site wide accessibility checks and delegating what large scale changes can be implemented from the back end to help ease the transition from A level or lower, to AAA.Our computing facilities are full of both regular staff and co-op students with exceptional skills. Without their support, not just the Faculty of Mathematics but the entire campus would be at quite a loss.
• #11: Like I mentioned previously, we’re encouraging our content maintainers, editors and authors to complete the courses that focus on accessibility by enrolling in sessions offered by the IST training and support group. For more immediate concerns like learning what exactly AODA regulations are and why they’re being implemented we’re offering in house sessions that offer a short review of the basic CMS fundamentals. For example, why using proper headers is necessary and how to create a line break without using the Header 1 feature. For new hires, it’s about making sure that they’ve completed these courses before they’re granted editing or authoring access. Together, with our computing specialists, we’re working on creating a module within the content management system that allows Faculty members to migrate their research pages into the CMS. This new module will allow them to delegate who has writing and editing access for their research group pages. Each of our 200 faculty members has their own way of explaining their research. We want to give them control while helping them realize that there are regulations to be met, and explain how meeting these regulations can help their content reach a larger audience. The benefit of migrating their research pages, is that many of the A level regulations are already built into the CMS and as a whole, we can avoid blue text on black backgrounds, use of improper or out of date institutional branding, comic sans or over serifed fonts and the ever dreaded spinning, glittering, click here gif. Finally, we’re working with Communications and Public Affairs to explain what resources and support we’re looking for from the Faculty level.
• #12: Being one of three communicators in Math and the only one in CS, it’s important that I’m leading by example. I don’t believe it’s fair asking others to tackle this without being able to understand their frustrations and being able to coach them through it. As a result, even though I’d like to think I have pretty solid grasp on accessibility needs and AODA regulations, I’m enrolled in the Intro to Accessibility course on the 11th and was actually enrolled in another accessibility course that was scheduled for today. I have full intentions of making sure that I can talk to any person working on web content within the Faculty and help them understand the logistics of the regulation implementations and why it’s essential.Luckily for me, I get to take on opportunities such as this where I can work with different individuals across campus, learn what they’re doing, and take that information back to our team to see whether or not it’s something that we need to be doing.Having taken most of the training courses focused on accessibility, and making that fact known, its important that faculty and staff in Math know that they can approach me for help with this.Finally, I’m going to be relying a good bit on Communications and Public Affairs, IST training and support and specifically our Web Accessibility Working Group to learn about the recommendations and risks uncovered in their report which Jonathan is going to talk more about now.
• #13: Arose from a clear view that January 1, 2014 would arrive and we would not be in compliance.Participation from CPA, Secretariat, IST and other unitsSurfaced 9 recommendations and a broad assessment of risks.Policy for governance and complianceTraining and support plan for 2000+ web maintainersDevelop and hire expertise in web-accessibility to support the planProcure services in web-accessibility where requiredDraft and implement a University wide communications plan on requirements and related supportSpecify and implement procurement requirements for external web-service providersDefine and implement a website accessibility audit processDraft recommendations for archival content (predating Jan 1, 2012)Contact peer institutions regarding their planningAll of these recommendations underpinned with the need to assign the work to a coordinator.Key takeaway for this slide: Have a plan. Act on it.
• #14: Built and deployed the Waterloo Content Management System with core functionality meeting all technical requirements. 250+ sites migrated so far.Developed staff training courses through Skills for the Electronic Workplace program:SEW 026: Introduction to Web AccessibilitySEW 106: Accessible Word and PDF filesSEW 108: Creating Accessible Web GraphicsSEW 110: Writing Accessible Web ContentSEW 112: Creating Accessible TablesMore on the way (key gaps are audio and video, other PDF document sources)[XXX staff trained] Other items to mention: CPA working through an audit to provide a model for others. Training program likely to be built from there.Best practices training merged with requirements training often has good results. Key takeaways for this slide:Your training and support plan is key to all other efforts.