Mary and Brian went through the first seven tools that one encounters before logging into Sakai.
They found several accessibility issues, even among those tools.
Brian is hoping to get Jiras written up soon.
These are the first tools noticed before anyone delves into Sakai; first impressions are important.
Participants In The Review and Call to Participate
Currently there are no walkthrough scripts for admin tools such as Worksite setup.
Brian will write up walkthrough script for the tools Users and Become a User.
Brian also signed up for the Forums tool, because Mary and Brian want to improve perceptability of that tool.
Scott is hoping to knock out Preferences and Profile and the bundle tool.
Brian will send out an e-mail for testing call for volunteers.
There will be a weekly teleconference to discuss the accessibility review.
We need to try and convince people to come aboard.
The reason some tools are listed as high is because they have not been looked at for a while, such as the Podcasts tool.
Writing Jiras for the Accessibility Review
There has been some discussion not to rate accessibility issues as blockers, aside from things such as the FCKEditor, which we already know is inaccessible.
In general, putting Jiras as critical is highly encouraged. However, it might still be feasible that if the tool is core enough, list them as a blocker.
Reviews should be done by the end of November.
Jiras should written by December 15.
People believe that would be enough time to resolve issues, but there are still accessibility issues unresolved in Messages and Forums.
Keep track of the Sakai 2.9 accessibility review page (especially the sign-up list) to see the progress of the accessibility review.
Date Picker
There has been talk about an accessible date picker because in Sakai, there are already several different implementations.
They are looking a date picker for internationalization for probably Sakai 2.10.
The jQuery one might be able to be made more accessible.
Right now it opens up by presenting itself as a div elemet on the bottom of the page and focus does not move there, so a screen reader user won't be aware of it.
Screen reader users should still be able to type in a date, though.
Also there is the issue of putting in the current date by pressing enter.
With all this discussion of date pickers, Brian is wondering if there is an equivalent time picker as well.
Discussion of Accessibility and Legal Activity and Whether It Relates to Sakai
Over the weekend, Brian wrote up an accessibility plan for IU.
A big piece of that complaint against Penn State was the LMS system.
Also at IU there was a query from the legal council to write up a VPAT (voluntary product accessibility template) on the accessibility of Oncourse.
This is due to the desire to get reimbursement from people at Illinois who were taking courses at IU.
there were a lot of "no, not accessible" answers due to the FCKEditor and other things IU has added to Oncourse.
concern and Possible Activity About How these Events Relate to the Sakai community
An educational e-mail needs to be written notifying the Sakai community that here is what is happening regarding accessibility in the legal world and possible impoications for Sakai.
We wantthe the e-mail to be a positive message because a lot of people have already put a great amount of effort into accessibility, and the Sakai commmunity needs to know about it.
After some discussion, we believe it would be best to wait until after the Sakai 2.9 review to start tackling this e-mail.
Participants in the teleconference can create the draft of this e-mail.
It would be important to educate the Sakai community that although the Penn State complaint was relevant to LMSs, the Sakai community already has made a lot of effort toward accessibility, and if more resources were allocated, then Sakai could soon become accessibility certified.
It would also be important to note that a lot of purchasers at universities are being urged to include accessibility language and requirements in purchasing contracts.
If Sakai does not catch up, it will be lost in the competition.
However, it is not impossible to accomplish this goal.
This e-mail will be addressed in late November/early December.
Sakai OAE
The interface for Sakai 3 still has a ways to go in order to be accessible.
Due to Joe's participation in the group, interest in accessibility has been raised.
They want to create an automated tool that would show developers potential accessibility errors.
They know it can't test for everything, but it would be a start.
52 of 63 jiras have been resolved.
Teleconference Schedule Change
Weekly Teleconferences during the 2.9 review testing will occur starting October 26.