Sakai 2.4 Accessibility Review Meetings and Notes

Scheduled Meetings

Meetings Dates and Times
July 2, 9, 16, 23, 30, August 6, 13 @ 10:30 AM EST (Mondays)
August 30, September 6, 20, October 4, 18, November 1, 15 @ 2:00 PM EST (Thursdays)

Dial-in# 812-856-7060
Conference Code: 348#
PIN: 72524#

Meeting Notes

July 2, 2007

Attendees: Mike Elledge, Megan May, Mary Stores, Ian, Cynthia York

Mike thanked everyone for attending and gave a walk-through of the 2.4 Accessibility Review site on Confluence. Ian asked about the process for resolving problems that are found. Mike described the summary document he prepares and mentioned that it has been forwarded to Gonzalo Silverio for review. Mary mentioned that she would like to help prepare the summary document for this round; Mike gratefully accepted her offer. Mike noted that the provisional tools need to be added to the collab site; Megan volunteered to set permissions so that they are available. Megan mentioned that we should test Gradebook and Roster for 2.5 since there have been significant changes since 2.4; she will let us know which path to access on an Indiana server.

Mike thanked everyone again, especially Ian since it is 1AM in Australia. Ian mentioned that he will communicate via email in future. Meeting adjourned approximately 11:40 AM.

July 9, 2007

Attendees: Mike Elledge, Joe Humbert, Mary Store, Cynthia York

Mike asked for a quick update; everyone is looking forward to reviewing the tools this week. Mike mentioned that he will be able to start next week because of a project. Mike stepped through the process of accessing Collab with Cynthia to help her locate Announcement tool. She was worried that it wasn't correct page because messages are year old; Mike explained that most correspondence has been via email or Confluence since then, but Mike will send out announcement to list about accessibility review. Mike then added the provisional tools and noticed several missing; volunteered to find out why (core: Calendar Summary, Message Center, Outline; provisional: Page Order Helper Tool, SU Tool, User Membership Tool). Meeting was adjourned with no other issues/questions approx 10:50 AM.

July 16, 2007

No meeting held.

July 23, 2007

Attendees: Megan May, Mary Store, Joe Humbert

Confusion over the starting time led to the meeting not taking place.

July 30, 2007

Attendees: Megan May, Mary Store, Joe Humbert, Mike Elledge

Mary and Joe mentioned that the Syllabus, Poll, and Forum tools did not have content, and that they were having trouble accessing Announcements. In addition, the Messages and Roster tools threw an error message, but Joe mentioned that the Roster tool now seems to be working. Megan volunteered to load test classes into Syllabus, and Mike corrected Mary's permissions so she could have admin privileges to Forum and Announcements. She will not review the Messages Tool until Megan confirms it is working properly.

Mary and Joe wondered how much time is still available for testing since they are working on other projects this week. Mike mentioned that the end date is somewhat arbitrary, and that they can continue work into next week or later if need be. Mike will collect the reviews to date, forward them to Gonzalo and enter them into Jira in the meantime.

We will meet again next week, using the same calling information.

August 6, 2007

Attendees: Sean DeMonner, Renee Echols, Megan May, Joe Humbert, Mary Stores

Sean introduced Renee Echols to the group.   She's new with the UMich QC group and is going to be focusing on accessibility testing.  She also teaches so it's an added bonus.  Renee has Window-eyes and wasn't sure if she should also be JAWS.  Joe and Megan suggested that she pick one of the tools Mary has already done to see if she gets different results (WS Setup).  Joe gave a good overview of the type of testing we've been conducting and how she could best help up. 

If Mike needs help getting the ananlysis into JIRA, Joe and Mary are willing to help out. Mike, can you provide more information and/or guidance?

August 13, 2007

Attendees: Jeff Ziegler, Sean DeMonner, Renee Echols, Megan May, Joe Humbert, Mike Elledge

Renee has had inconsistent experiences testing Sakai with Window-Eyes depending on the server, including not being able to select the semester in the Worksite tool on the NL server. Megan's diagnosis is that a properties switch is not turned on. Megan suggested that she use the QA1-NL server for all her reviews, which has all tools turned on and should be stable.

Renee mentioned that she has problems accessing drop-down menu subitems using Firefox, although it isn't a problem with Internet Explorer. It appears to be a problem throughout Sakai, and has been found in Schedule, the More list on the main page, and Resources. Mike will get together (virtually) with Gonzalo and try to figure out why. Perhaps it is a problem with the way lists are configured; perhaps it is a problem with Firefox.

Renee also mentioned that the WYSIWYG editor isn't very accessible, since the items for configuring text (bold, underline, etc. aren't tagged). Renee's workaround is to cut and paste text. She is able to move out of the text box by turning on the MSA (or browse) mode and hitting tab. Mike wondered if there is a similar setting for JAWS that won't strand him in the text box.

She has also found that page instructions are often confusing and refer to visual cues (Resources tool example: "The Red X on the right side of the screen."

Joe mentioned that he and Mary Stores have finished their analyses (Thank you!) and that he has posted his to the WG:Accessibility site in Confluence.

Mike indicated that he will be able to start putting the reviews into Jira this week.

Megan and Mike decided to continue to have this meeting, and Megan will reserve the time. Meeting adjourned approximately 11:00 AM.

August 30, 2007

Attendees: Renee Echols, Joe Humbert, Mary Stores, Jeff Ziegler and Mike Elledge

Renee discussed her review of the Tests and Quizzes tool. She found reviewing a grade and then releasing it was the area of greatest difficulty. She thought that the option to display one question per page rather than all at once would be useful for students with learning disabilities to have, but that it is available to instructors only. Renee found that choosing dates with the calendar widget worked well. She also mentioned that the drop down menu for choosing an assessment didn't work properly, as it is triggered by moving focus there. Mary mentioned that there is a command in JAWS to open up a dropdown menu, and that perhaps there was something similar in Window-Eyes. Renee will continue to work on the Tests & Quizzes tool with Jeff.

Renee also found problems with the Wiki tool. When in forms mode all text would disappear, and couldn't find anything by arrowing around. She also found that once out of forms mode she couldn't revise what she typed.

The meeting was moved to Thursday to better accommodate everyone's schedules. It was also decided to make this a permanent change, and to meet next again next Thursday (originally were going to meet in two weeks, but would conflict with bi-weekly QA meeting). Thereafter it take place every other Thursday, at 2PM.

September 6, 2007

Looking for notes...

September 20, 2007

Looking for notes...

October 4, 2007

Attendees: Margaret Londergan, Mary Stores, Gonzalo Silverio, Megan May, Joe Humbert, Mike Elledge. Renee Echols sent her regrets because of a class conflict.

Group discussed problem with dropdown menus on Resources in 2.4. Originally designed to provide enhanced accessibility, it was found that screen readers were not reading the header or sublinks. This approach was eliminated in version 2.5. In order to better understand the issue, however, Indiana University will demonstrate the problem via Breeze. Gonzalo will propose several times and dates for scheduling.

Group discussed the top ten list of accessibility issues recently posted by Mike, specifically the proposal to enable users to turn accesskeys on and off. After some discussion, it was decided to lower the priority for the proposed feature to "Minor", since 1) Firefox and Internet Explorer have reduced the liklihood of key conflicts by changing accesskey keystroke combinations to alt+shift from alt+, and 2) persons using screen readers can already either choose to use them, ignore them, or create their own. These two factors essentially eliminate the need for an on/off feature. The other intended audience, those who use accesskeys to expedite coding, would by default want them on.

Mike asked Margaret if Joe could load accessibility issues found in the previous review cycle (for Sakai 2.3) into Jira. Having the most recently discovered issues added has been a great help. Margaret and Joe said they would be available and happy to do so. On a related matter, Mike recently revised the descriptions for all accessibility items in Jira to be more consistent, with a format as follows: Accessibility: "Description of issue" ("Name of Tool"). In addition, accessibility issues are identified in Jira as affecting two components: Accessibility, and the tool involved. He will contact Peter, who had asked Joe to use a different format, to see if this is acceptable.

Megan asked if anyone was attending the Sakai Conference in December in Mewport Beach. Due to funding constraints, it looks as though neither Mike nor Gonzalo will attend. Megan graciously offered to give a short update on accessibility during her QA presentation; Mike will supply her with 5 or 6 slides.

Meeting was adjourned approximately 2:45.

October 18, 2007

Attendees: Mary Stores, Gonzalo Silverio, Megan May, Joe Humbert, Jason Stewart, Mike Elledge.

The group welcomed Jason Stewart to the Sakai Accessibility effort. Jason is a graduate student in HCI at the University of Michigan with an interest in accessibility. He volunteers in the Sakai user support area.

Mary and Joe talked about their review of changes to the Action menu drop down in the 2.4 Resources tool with Gonzalo. Although JAWS now reads the list of actions that can be taken, it does not announce the Actions heading itself. Gonzalo suggested a couple of approaches for resolving that problem and will put instances into the Sakai Garden site for Mary and Joe to check. Jason mentioned that he had used JAWS to review some of Sakai in the ATCS (Adaptive Technology Computing Site) at U of M and found an issue with form labels being read after input boxes. Joe mentioned that including <label for> and <id> elements might resolve the problem, and Mike suggested Jason enter the problem as a Jira item. He will send a link to Jason that will take him to the accessibility issues list for Sakai
(http://confluence.sakaiproject.org/confluence/display/2ACC/Accessibility+Issues+in+Jira), from which he can see the format we're using for accessibility items.

Joe mentioned that he hopes to begin moving issues identified in 2.3 into Jira soon. Gonzalo asked if the intention was to go back and repair 2.3. Mike said no, that the expectation was that problems identified earlier probably still applied to tools that hadn't been rebuilt and would be part of the QA process for the current version of Sakai. He will send the address of the page in Confluence containing a list of 2.3 tool reviews to Gonzalo so that he can tell Joe which tools haven't changed substantially since. Joe will then post issues for those tools into Jira.

Mike then brought up the subject of how to move forward with developing and testing a frameless version of Sakai, building on Chuck Severance's work on a frameless PDA version, and the enthusiasm voiced by Aaron Zekoski, Antranig Basman, Chuck, Colin Clark and others. Gonzalo suggested setting up a test server for working on the idea, with careful documentation of what is involved. He also suggested creating a Confluence page to support the effort. Mike will contact Megan about setting up a test server and put together a page in Confluence to help collaboration.

Meeting was adjourned approximately 2:45.