IT Accessibility: The Big Picture Writ Mid-sized Terrill Thompson Technology Accessibility Specialist University of Washington Robert Squires Director, UMOnline University of Montana Marlene Zentz Accessibility Specialist & Instructional Design Consultant University of Montana

Outline Introductions Audience Poll Historical Background Today’s Technology Landscape Culture, Policy and Vendors Strategies & Solutions Next Steps

Introductions

University of Washington Accessible Technology Services, part of UW-IT AccessibleWeb@U Interest Group IT Accessibility Task Force Distributed services E&IT Accessibility Task Force Montana Accessibility Interest Group University of Montana AT in Microcomputer labs since 1984; AccessibleWeb@U started in 2003 Task Force = VP for IT, Ext Affairs, including Disability Services, Purchasing, Faculty

Audience Poll

Live Poll Results

Historical Background

Legal Accessibility Requirements Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, Amended in 1998

Standards and Guidelines W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 1.0 (1999) Section 508 Accessibility Standards (2000) W3C WCAG 2.0 (2008) W3C Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) specification

EDUCAUSE Core Data Service Survey 2013 Question: Did your institution have a web accessibility policy and if so, upon what standards or guidelines was it based?

Preliminary Survey Results (n=550) 49% No, my institution did not have a web accessibility policy 36% Yes, based on Section 508 standards 7% Yes, based on WCAG 2.0 3% Yes, based on WCAG 1.0 6% Yes, based on other standards or guidelines Other = state, in-house, international, combination Final results will be published here: educause.edu/cds

Future: Updated Laws and Standards Information & Communication Standards (Sec 508) ADA Regulations for Web Accessibility ICT: Access Board’s refresh of Sec 508 & 255 standards Two public drafts have been released Most recent draft in December 2011 Draft is harmonized with WCAG 2.0 Level AA Public comment period ended March 2012 ADA: U.S. Department of Justice proposed new regs in June 2010 Notice of Proposed Rulemaking was expected in July 2013

Meanwhile… June 2009 – NFB vs Arizona State University (and 5 others) November 2010 – NFB vs Penn State University March 2011 – NFB vs Northwestern and NYU March 2012 – NFB vs Florida State University And numerous other complaints filed with the U.S Dept of Education Office for Civil Rights (OCR) Arizona State – Amazon Kindle Penn State – OCR complaint, multiple violations including LMS, classroom tech, third party vendors (financial) Northwestern & NYU – Google Apps Florida State – multiple violations, including math software, clickers

Today’s Technology Landscape

Accessibility of Websites 77.9% of pages include HTML headings 60.4% of images have alternate text 39.3% of form fields have labels 3.3% of pages use ARIA landmark roles Sample: 31,701 web pages at 3251 higher education institutions in the U.S. Source: itd.athenpro.org (April 2013)

PDF Accessibility 33.8% of PDFs in higher education are “tagged” Only 20.7% of PDFs at doctorate-granting universities are “tagged” “Tagged” = the foundation for accessibility is in place But a tiny fraction of tagged PDFs are truly accessible (with headings, semantic structure, alt text, etc.)

Accessibility of Vendors’ Products “Making accessibility a priority in (vendors’) development roadmap is going to be driven by market demand. And if an institution never says a word, the vendor isn’t going to do anything about it. So if we begin to communicate our demands collectively, then the vendor will recognize the market value of accessibility.” Gerry Hanley, Senior Director of Academic Technology Services California State University Chancellor’s Office

Accessibility of Video 1.6 million videos on YouTube have captions (2012) 100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute (estimated 1 billion videos) 0.16% of videos are captioned on YouTube 0.00% of video on are captioned on Vimeo 0.00% of video anywhere is audio described.

A Mid-Sized Case in Point

Culture Before the Office of Civil Rights Complaint… How to engage the institution and our statewide affiliates around issues of accessibility? Montana Accessibility Interest Group: http://umt.edu/accessibility_group/ Roles of various cultural groups, Sustaianble sociaaly just learning experiences

Policy Senior Leadership Commitment IT Accessibility Constituent Group UM Electronic and Information Technology Task Force https://moodle.umt.edu/course/view.php?id=618

Vendors Culture revisited Moodlerooms Moodle Accessibility Collaboration Group

Strategies & Solutions

Strategies and Solutions What accessibility strategies and solutions have you used at your institution?

Next Steps Creating an Accessible Campus: Login information https://moodle.umt.edu/course/view.php?id=618 Select Non-NetID Login Username: educause Password: educause

Next Steps Add ideas to the Moodle Shell Join the Montana Accessibility Interest Group Follow the accessibility track at EDUCAUSE Communicate demands for accessibility with vendors Join the IT Accessibility Constituent Group: http://educause.edu/groups/itaccess Friday, 9.10am-10.00am, 207B