Accessibility WG Teleconference Minutes 01-10-2013

Attendees

The draft of accessibility help document has been sent to the group by Jane and Gonzalo.
Between now and the next teleconference, Joe has asked the Accessibility WG to please go through the revised help documentation.
Joe thinks that the draft so far is good, but the content could be more robust and he asks everyone to bring ideas to the next teleconference.

Target for RC01 is still unreleased due to outstanding issues.
- A performance issue in Gradebook with groups.
- Multiple security issues, which need patches.
There are also 90+ other issues, most have been merged.
People are being asked to help retest the tickets to look for regressions around testing.
Once the security issues get resolved, a release candidate will be released.
This benefits the Accessibility WG. If the WG can get accessibility related issues with fixes verified to the trunk, there is a chance the fixed issues can get integrated into 2.9.1.
Most of the issues Joe tested for regression have not had any problems.
The target date for the release is the end of January or early February.
The Accessibility WG should retest fixes related to accessibility Jiras.
- Every issue has been tagged as 2.9.1 triage.
- A Google doc would be set up by Neal to indicate items that have been tested.
- Another label could be added as 2.9.1 retested or re-verified.
- The challenge with labels is not everyone updates them.
- When an issue has been tested by someone, that person can email Neal.

The Accessibility WG should continue testing.
- Joe will work with Brian to make sure the test server gets updated with new test builds.
- Scott Williams and a Michigan student are working on testing as well.

Neal and Joe will send out updates of issues that need to be tested after they are merged into the 2.9.1 test server.
There have been some recently resolved Jiras within the last four or five days.
The biggest unresolved issue is the 5 minute warning issue. It’s marked up with ARIA dialog role, so the warning isn’t specifically read out for JAWS 13 and 12 users in Internet Explorer 8 or 9. There is no focusable content in Sakai’s implementation of the dialog box, only text.
- The jQuery implementation does have a title. The trouble is that the authoring practices don’t match the current use of a modal dialog. The way it was originally envisioned is not how people are using it on the web today. Since the best practices are still in draft mode, though, the creators of the best practices could still update the modal dialog best practices.
- The solution proposed is to place a duplicate of the text in the title of the dialog box. Most people that commented in Sakai didn’t like that solution.
- Solution 2 was to point the aria-labelledby attribute to the dialog box. It’s a hack, because it will just read the contents of the dialog. However, this second solution has not been implemented, so once it’s been put on a test server, Joe will request people to test it.

The Accessibility WG has set a goal to write guidelines about creating accessible documentation.
Accessible Content Creation guidelines will be delayed until after the accessible help documentation has been finished.
The WG can then put the content creation guidelines on the Sakai Accessibility WG Wiki page and then post the guidelines document somewhere else later on.
The goal is to have the Creating Accessible Documents Guidelines written by June 1.

At the Release Team meeting this morning, the Accessibility WG’s suggestions about adding accessibility preferences in Chat were discussed.
- The release team didn’t see any problems with adding the preferences.
- However, the Accessibility WG would have to find a developer to work on the code.
- The release team said just treat it like a normal bug/feature request, and they will put it through the normal patch process.
There would be 3 check boxes: one for toggling ARIA live announcement of the user list, one for the toggling announcement of incoming chats, and an audio tone that announces when a new message comes in.
The audio tone will be the hardest to develop, because depending on browser used, they same sound file format may not be supported in all browsers.
- Firefox supports .mp3 and IE doesn’t.
- Google Chrome supports another format that both Firefox and IE do not.
- More research will be needed for development of the audio tone.
Joe will try and reach out to Gonzalo to get some time.
Otherwise, Joe will reach out to Brian to see if someone at IU could do the development of these preferences.
This will be brought back up at the next meeting.

This will be brought up at the next meeting when more of our usual participants can join us.
Please consider what global Sakai accessibility preferences would be useful to toggle between now and the next teleconference.

People are still willing and able to do testing.
We will shoot for dates in mid-February after the first teleconference.
Joe will send a Doodle poll with a list of dates for testing Tests and Quizzes sometime between Feb. 7^th and Feb. 21^st.

Neal is still waiting to here back from the security contacts.
- Once he gets the list, he will send it to the group.
He will be participating in webinars that talk about Sakai changes from 2.8 and 2.9.
- He will include information about accessibility and put a plug in to expand participation in the Accessibility WG.
It is also possible the WG could do a webinar as a group to the larger Sakai community.
IU has led the Accessibility WG group since early 2008.
There may come a time when Joe will have to step back and become a participant.
If anyone would like to volunteer themselves or someone else with their permission, it would be a good thing.
- As a volunteer, you wouldn’t have to be a programmer, you could delegate tasks you feel you don't have the skills to complete.
There have been some concerns raised that the Sakai Accessibility WG could seem IU-directed.

Next Meeting January 24, 2013