Jared: Hello, and welcome to the fifth in our series of webcasts sponsored by the National Center on Disability and Access to Education, or NCDAE. The topic for this webcast is accessible distance education technologies and techniques. My name is Jared Smith, and I am a technology specialist at the NCDAE. And when we talk about the realm of distance education technologies, obviously it's very huge, there are a lot of technologies out there, from satellite to web delivery, to voice conferencing, teleconferencing, and so forth. What we want to do today I really talk generally about what some of the big issues are of accessibility in distance education, as well as discuss the accessibility implications and features of a few specific distance education technologies that are being developed or implemented by our three panelists, who I am pleased have joined us. The first of our panelists is Kristine Neuber, she is the assistive technology and web accessibility coordinator for the Kellar Institute of Human Disabilities at George Mason University, where she's currently coordinating the university's plan for institutional reform in the area of web accessibility and distance education. Hello, Kristine.
Kristine: Hello. I can tell you a little bit about our organization and what we're doing here. As the accessibility coordinator I'm responsible for providing assistive technology assistance to students and faculty who need it, to access distance ed classes, or anything on the web. And also provide the assistive technology in general to the population, as well as working on accessibility for our main web page and trying to set up some policies for faculty and staff to follow. And one of the things we're also doing here is doing some distance ed through Polycom video cameras and learning a lot about the accessibility issues related to that that I can hopefully get into.
Jared: Thank you for being with us. We also have soy any Cisse, she is accessibility coordinator for Blackboard Incorporated, a leading software company in the E-education field, and the creator of the popular Blackboard learning and content management system. Thank you for being with us, Soyini, how are you.
Soyini: Fine, thank you. Thank you for having me.
Jared: We also are joined by Bob Regan, director of product management for education, government, and finance services at Macromedia. He's a customer advocate and is the product manager for accessibility, hello Bob.
Bob: Thanks for having me.
Jared: What I'd like to do is ask each of our panelists to just take a minute and further introduce yourselves, discuss what your organizations are currently doing in the field of distance education, and what you're doing to address the general challenges of accessibility that are posed by distance education. And Kristine, you've already kind of introduced a little bit about what you're doing, but if you want to continue.
Kristine: I got ahead of myself, there.
Jared: You're fine.
Kristine: What I can also say is that probably the majority of our classes, as is probably true on most university campuses, is hybrid, so we have classes that are face to face, that always use some sort of online component, so on a day-to-day basis I'm working with students to try and overcome some of the accessibility issues they're running into using course management tools. And then, as I said, we're also doing the distance ed through Polycom cameras, and issues related to servicing people who are on different campuses, who are using video to conduct classes, and how to deal with captioning, and those kinds of issues across distances.
Jared: Okay, very good. And Soyini.
Soyini: What are we doing? We are continuously trying to improve usability, you know, accessibility on Blackboard. We are going through the process, however, of gearing up for an accessibility audit, and we're putting out an RFP on the academic suite. So it's just the continual reviewing what we're doing, where we're going, and how we can be better and provide a vehicle so that the institutions, corporate clients, can provide accessible information or content to their users.
Jared: Very good, thank you. And Bob, go ahead and give us an update of what you're doing at Macromedia.
Bob: Well, you may not know, I've been here at Macromedia for four years, now, and we've had a pretty long history of addressing accessibility. At a high level, one of the most important things that we do, because we have so many of our customers are the people that create the content that ends up on the web, which actually present the actual challenges. So one of the most important things we do is to engage with scientists to try to help them understand the issues, and the techniques that are needed in order to address them. Where possible, we integrate them into the tool, where not, we try to put information up on our web site, whether through our manuals or through our developer center or through our accessibility portal. A lot of folks tend to interpret accessibility problems as just simple web development issues. So you know, for example, when someone wants to make a web site they generally don't sit down with a course on HTML. They'll buy a copy of Dreamweaver. At that point, when someone is asking us questions on, "How do I accomplish this task?" We want accessibility to be integrated directly into the instruction we provide at that point in time. From there, we have a variety of other efforts. You know, at a technical level we're always building new software, so we're constantly trying to collect information from users with disabilities and designers to make sure that we're not only understanding how we can make sure the content that comes out of our tools is accessible, but get feedback from designers on how we can better interface with designers to present them with the questions that will help them arrive at accessible content. We're also constantly working with standards, bodies, AT vendors that we have a level of interoperability across the range of tools that people use in the space. And then another important issue for us is working with the disability community, and making sure that we don't have separate efforts specific focused on people with disabilities, but we make sure that people with disabilities are included in our standard processes by which we engage with customers and users of content created with our tools.
Jared: Very good, thank you. I want to continue on and drill down just a little bit more to the technologies that you're using and implementing and developing. It's important that we understand the implications that these tools might have for individuals with disabilities, and our panelists represent kind of a diverse type of technologies that are out there. Kristine really is on the implementation side, and sees a lot of different technologies that are implemented at a higher ed institution. Soyini is involved in content and learning management systems, and their development. And then Bob really, a vast array of development technologies, and distance education technologies, specifically with things like Breeze or their actually delivery mechanisms, not necessarily just as development systems such as Dreamweaver and Flash, which are used very much in distance education as well. So could each of you take just a minute and maybe discuss how somebody with a disability would interact with the technologies that you're implementing or developing? So for instance if somebody is blind or deaf and they are using, for instance, Blackboard or Breeze, or Kristine, perhaps, Polycom, as you mentioned, on your campus, what are the types of things that they're going to experience, and what steps have you taken, or will you be taking to help make those technologies more accessible to that individual? We'll go ahead and start with Bob.
Bob: Okay, so I want to change the question on you.
Jared: Go ahead.
Bob: Because I think from my standpoint, one of the biggest challenges that we have is working with designers. I think that we get a lot of information from end users of our tools, whether it's something that's developed or based on the Flash platform, something that's based on HTML, saying, "I can't get this thing to work what can you do?" And in many cases the point at which the decisions that are made that shape that user experience, that shape that customer experience, are made at the point of the designer. So in many ways what I'm focused on, to the extent that I can, because I have greater influence over designers than many of my colleagues and many other points of accessibility, is to try and shape the experience of the designer so that what we arrive at out of their development process is an accessible piece of technology. Now, the challenge that we see there is that for many designers they have very limited understanding of accessibility, and even more importantly, they have very limited understanding of how people with disabilities use that technology, how they use the assistive technologies that are there. And as a result, not surprisingly in many cases, they have very poor instincts for what constitutes a great experience, for what constitutes a useable product for somebody with a disability. To the extent that we can anticipate what they're going to be building, whether in the simplified piece of HTML, we can shape that experience very closely. Tools like Captivate, when you're creating presentations in Breeze, when you're creating an application in Flex, we can shape what's being done, because we know pretty much in advance you're only going to come out with one of a certain number of types of different applications. Once you get into a very dynamic authoring tool like Flash, you can do any number of sorts of things, and so the complexity of what can be put in front of an end user and customer will be much more difficult. And this gets to your original question, if we think about drawing a circle in Flash, well that circle can become a button, that circle can become a dial, that circle can become an animation, it can become any number of sorts of things. So the challenges faced by the user is, what is that thing? What does it do? Is it on? Is it off? Is it moving? What kind of information do we need to provide around it? And the biggest challenge for me is helping the designer understand how to communicate that information to the end user.
Jared: So it really is a balance between development of tools that are going to support accessibility, but also educating the end user that's using those tools to understand what those features are and really implement them.
Bob: Yeah, that's very true. And you know, when someone opens a manual for one of our tools, or when someone goes on line to learn about our tools, I want them to have the information they need integrated into the question that they ask. So they may not come to- - If they come to my web site and ask, "How does somebody with a disability use an HTML web page?" they'll get very specific information. But the more important question is, how do I put an image on a web page? And I want to make sure when we provide the answer to that question, we're answering the question around accessibility at the same time.
Jared: Right, very good. Soyini, you want to talk a little bit about some of the accessibility implications of the tools that you guys are developing, and what you guys are doing on the accessibility front?
Soyini: I would have to kind of go along with what Bob has said. We are, before we can present or give the tool, we have to go back to the requirement, and so you know I'm in on part of the requirement process with our designers, and the requirements people, to ensure that everyone is covered. And if they're coming out with these, you know, wonderful features for Blackboard, then to ensure that people with disabilities, such as blind users, can use the software, is it accessible to them? Can they use it? Can they get the information from the tool? And in particular, we've worked a lot with Dr. Norm Coombs, on how we can provide information, as well as adding a link from EZ to Blackboard's corporate web site, offering courses on instructors on how to build, like, a barrier-free web course, or content. So there are just like a couple of things that we're trying to do to make sure that what we are providing, the vehicle, again, is useable after it gets to the instructor, and then also providing documentation manuals on how to provide accessible content. We've added, you know, various things, alt-tags, titles to the frames, just so that going along everyone can use the tool correctly.
Jared: Okay, it sounds like your response very much mirrored Bob's.
Soyini: Yes.
Jared: You're doing what can you in development, but much of your efforts are focused towards education and informing the end user how to actually use those accessibility features. I know with content management systems, that the end user often develops the actual content. You're just the repository, or the shell that surrounds that.
Soyini: Exactly.
Jared: There's only so much you can do for accessibility on your part, a big part of that is actually educating the person that's creating the content that goes into that system to ensure that it is accessible.
Soyini: Exactly. And then just making sure that our developers are, like we had a developer's conference last year and we had Dr. Coombs come in and walk through Blackboard. And we don't have someone with a disability in our, on our development team. But having him come in and walk through Blackboard, completely new perspective on how people are using the tool. And then when we had our audit last year, the same thing. They had users, disabled users use Blackboard, and say, "This is our experience, we didn't like the way we did this.” So with that we've taken these issues and addressed them in upcoming releases.
Jared: Great. Kristine, maybe you can address some of the technologies that you're using there at your campus, and what some of the implications or problems, or maybe benefits have been as far as accessibility goes, and what you guys are doing to address some of those accessibility issues.
Kristine: Sure. To start off, we have a very large lab for assistive technology, so we have a lot of assistive technology available to our faculty and students, including things like screen readers, screen enlargers, voice activated software that can help people with disabilities access the web. And a lot of times these technologies solve the problem, but as often they create issues with these types of distance ed software programs that we're using. So we are using very extensively, we use Dreamweaver to create web sites, some faculty have been using Dreamweaver to create web sites, and there's a lot of accessibility features, as Bob was talking about, integrated into that. And what we've just started doing now is our Dreamweaver course which we teach, we've actually integrated our web accessibility class into that. So we're doing what Bob is saying, where we're teaching the accessibility at the same time that we're teaching Dreamweaver, which is very helpful. Because all these technologies exist, the assistive technologies exist. If the developer doesn't think about them, the person adding the content doesn't think about it, it will cause barriers for students. For example, the biggest problem that I work with on campus is with course management tools like Web CT and Blackboard, not because Blackboard and Web CT are not accessible, but when they put the content on, for example they'll load a PDF file as a handout. If the file is not created accessibly, then the student is not able to read it because of the image, and the screen reader won't be able to interpret that image because it's not real text. So that becomes a problem for that student, and most of it's an educational thing for the person who put the content up doesn't understand that it's not readable. So what we will do from that end is we have technology to scan in PDF files, using software such as Cursewhile or Win, which literally scans it in electronically and turns it into text so it can then be read by the student. So we have kind of services outside of the class itself for students to be able to convert inaccessible material into accessible material. At the same time, we're trying to educate the faculty and the developers of these courses on simple things that they can do to make their content more accessible. Another example would be providing alt-tags that was just mentioned. Those alt-tags are available in Blackboard, for example, but if the faculty or the developer doesn't understand that it's there, they're not going to use it and then that particular image that was put up there doesn't have alternative text associated with it. So we're really trying to do also a combination of providing technologies to help students once they see something that's inaccessible, and also educating the faculty about how to make their courses accessible.
Jared: And I guess a follow-up to that, most of the people listening are from higher ed institutions. What have you found- - You talked about training faculty and informing them. What are some of the things that you have found that have been, you know, that have really worked, have been beneficial getting the word out and informing them on how to actually use some of these tools?
Kristine: We do have monthly trainings for anybody that wants to take it. But what I found most successful is when faculty member gets somebody in their class who has a disability or uses some of this technology where they see the real application of it, or actually having somebody on campus who can go out and actually has a disability, can show the faculty member what the issues are. Because what I've found is anybody that really understands what the problem is, they want to make the changes, and these tools that are now integrating accessibility right into it makes it very easy. I think you'll see more and more of, more and more people using those features to make their web sites more accessible. So I guess I would say the most successful thing would be one, to make it real for them, to make, when you're doing training to make sure that you have something that's real that makes a person with a disability there that can make it real, and then secondly, make it easy for them to access that information and the tools to make it happen.
Jared: Thank you. A question for, we'll start with Soyini. When we talk about distance education, I tend to lump it into two groups, one we have this asynchronous part that is usually web pages or PDF documents, and then we have another piece which is chats and threaded discussions and video conferencing and a lot of those. So for both Soyini and Bob, when you look at these synchronous, live, happening right now technologies, what are some of the challenges you have faced in your development, in making those successful? Start with Soyini.
Soyini: I would say, because there's always discussion around, a collaboration tool. I would say the challenges have been that because it's a visual tool, that we haven't had, like our developers are thinking logically, or not thinking logically, but thinking in a way that it includes everyone. So the chat, like for example, we had some links that would provide installation help, documentation, for the Java access bridge. But it was like a very clear line, and it wasn't- - We had a download link and a documentation link. But it did not identify what it was. So when you use the screen reader, it just said it was a link. It said it was help, it didn't say what it was. It wasn't clear to a user. So we provided more documentation that it would read, and you know you're going to use the screen reader to access the accessible chat tool. It would give more information, so they know what they're selecting. And then once you get to using the screen reader it identified what the link was. Another thing we did is providing shortcut, or key strokes to maximize or take the screen to a normal size or minimize. We have two collaboration, or we have a virtual classroom, and a chat tool. And over the buttons it had "join session," but it doesn't say which one you're joining. So there were a couple of things that we wanted to include that you could use at a screen reader if you're not looking at this chat tool. And we continued to improve, and like on the discussion board we had the various colors, so it would change colors if you selected it. But we also added an icon so when the screen reader read it, it was new, or sort on all the new forms, or discussion boards. There are just a couple of things we're trying to include in these tools to make it more accessible, or better accessible.
Jared: And we really applaud you for the efforts that you've made. I know some of those tools really posed accessibility challenges. I know you've come a long way. Bob, talk a little bit about some of the challenges that Macromedia's faced with maybe some of their more advanced tools, and what you guys are doing to address those issues.
Bob: You know, one of the things that's interesting, if you look at an online synchronous space, is that what you're trying to do is push information out in a variety of channels simultaneously. So you have a chat pod, a white board, a presentation, there'll be an audio overlaying the top of it, and we're trying to expect somebody to contend with multiple sources of data coming in at the same time. So this represents one of the toughest challenges, from a development standpoint. We can enable the accessibility of each individual piece of data, but the sum total of those parts do not necessarily result in something that's accessible. And so what we're trying to do is spend time looking and participating in research projects on different types of strategies for online collaboration that not only result in what we consider a great visual experience, where we're putting multiple pieces of data up at the same time, but also in something that can be constrained and configured dynamically by the user, based on what they want at one time. So for example, how do you do something like what we're doing now, where we have an online audio chat, and we have a text chat going at the same time? What types of cues do we want to provide to the user to let them know what you're paying attention to, there's been an update in the audio chat? How do we allow the user to configure that? That's not something we've seen in any of the tools that are out there yet today. There's a lot of effort at simply doing the nuts and bolts of accessibility, but I think we have a long way to go in understanding the usability for people with disabilities in these types of environments. And that's where my effort has been, today, has been primarily in participating in and conducting research along those lines. We're not going to do anything until we're convinced that it's actually going to represent a real solution for our customers. Another thing that's sort of interesting, is we've talked a little bit about captioning. I know we have a captioner on line with us today, and I think there's an important transformation that's happening in the captioning space today. As we start to see these types of online collaborations become more available, so you have, where traditionally we might do captioning in the closed proprietary systems we see available today, we need a more standard space captioning infrastructure where, you know the University of Wisconsin or Columbia University, if they have an online web conference and they want to invite a captioner, they should be able to call a service like Caption Colorado, invite that person to the meeting, and have that captioned text delivered in the format that meets the infrastructure of that university. We don't see that today. We're just starting to see some of the first products that are supporting that. And I think that's going to be a really important development as we move forward and really getting a true interoperability across the industry in that domain.
Jared: I know that's something that the national center here has really looked at and is trying to address, is those captioning needs that are out there, and it sounds like both of the responses that each of you gave really reflect the need for user testing, for user interaction, for testing with assistive technologies, and gaining an understanding of what that user experience is with those technologies, and doing your best to synthesize all of that and take it back and put it into a product. Kristine, another question for you. I know you're at a very large university, and you've worked hard on policy implementation as far as what is being used and how it's being used on your campus. I would ask about procurement policy. What responsibility does the university, or those people that are purchasing these technologies, what's their responsibility in regards to accessibility?
Kristine: Well, as a state university we have certain guidelines that we have to follow as far as purchasing software and following some of the Section 508 guidelines. And actually the state of Virginia, as far as that is concerned, has said that we do have to purchase Section 508-compliant products, which is much easier said than it is done. Especially when it comes to this type of technology, because first of all, a lot of it is not compliant, people are just learning about the technology, and about the guidelines, so they don't have 100 percent compliant products out there for us to buy. But there is now, as part of our purchasing process, a line in the contract that says "your product must be 508 compliant." And what we've done in that respect, because what happens is the vendor comes back and says, "You know, we don't have that, it doesn't exist yet." Or they come and they say, "Well, we've gotten this far, this is our plan." So at this point what we're requiring is that one, the technology exists to make it happen, meaning that there's some way to make that technology accessible, then they have to show us what their 508, or their accessibility plan is. Typically they can give us, "We've gotten through these standards, we haven't yet figured out how to do this," and then so we have that on file. Also what we've done is we've actually had in a contract, if we're going to buy something, a big product, something that's expensive and going to be used across the campus, is we'll have a clause in the contract that we actually write in the contract that says if there's a person who needs to use this and is unable to due to accessibility issues, that somebody from that company would come and work on a solution for that particular person or that group of people that can't access it. So we have been relatively successful, certainly in getting that kind of a statement into some of our products. But the reality of it is that it just is not, the technology hasn't conformed to the section 508 standards as of yet in most cases, so we're just getting kind of half way there, I think, in most cases. But I think our at least starting the process of getting people aware of the fact that they need to be thinking about this, and if there's any way that we can- - We have to search for the technology that is accessible and purchase that over something that is not. But a lot of times we can't find something that is 100 percent accessible for them. We have to deal with the clause in the contract.
Jared: I guess that leads very well into a question that was posed by one of the listeners. As you talk about policy and procurement policy, and maybe some of the influences that that may have on developers and the people that are distributing these technologies, I guess I'd ask this question to Bob and Soyini. The question was specifically related to textbooks, it comes in from Las Pacidas College. Is anything being done to force textbook publishers to make the content they give instructors accessible? I'm going to rephrase that and say, what are the things that, I don't know if "force" is the right word, but what are the things that are motivating you to really address accessibility? Is it things like Kristine talked about? Procurement policy? Section 508 that's really driving you to implement this accessibility? Is it just internal policies or standards that you, in a corporate environment, may have? Is it purely legal? What are some of the motivations that you have in your development to maintain accessibility? Let's start with Soyini.
Soyini: Actually I would say that it's more internal. We started the process, you know, many years ago as it has been, we've always had a dedicated person, now we have a more cross functional team to include it as not just a development issue. This affects the whole company. And so our first thing is that this is important to everybody. There's a strong commitment to accessibility for everyone. Then we go, because of where we're located right now, our first focus is the Section 508 compliance, and we're also looking at the international laws, because we've gone global. So that is really where our push is, that- - I mean it really goes to usability. Can everyone use the system? And can they use it effectively? So that's what our focus is. That's what drives Blackboard.
Jared: And Bob.
Bob: Well let me first answer the participant's question. One of the driving factors today, actually as of December, the IDEA, the Individuals with Disability Education Act in the U.S. was reauthorized with specific requirements for instructional materials. So it's formed something known as the National Instruction Accessibility Standards, commonly known as NIMAS. It's not yet finalized, I believe. I may be wrong on that, but it is expected to be implemented within a year once that standard is finalized. So we are seeing tremendous interest from textbook publishers on this. And so you know, we've had a number of conversations with textbook publishers here at Macromedia, because many of them are using our tools, to little avail. There's a big challenge of the textbook publishers of moving expertise in print to effectively a web publishing work flow. So now, with NIMAS, they have to solve that problem. And so creating accessible textbooks forces them to contend with all kinds of other issues around all kinds of other issues around the challenges of simply getting your text in digital form on the web in a well thought-out and formatted process. So the, from there, what kinds of things motivate us? Well, I think that the comments that were made earlier are very, very important. We care because it's the right thing to do. And you know, like Blackboard, you know, this is something that we get really, really excited about. But we're a publicly traded company and there has to be a business case. And so we get, whenever I can get a business justification behind what I'm doing, a customer that says, "You know what, if you don't do this I'm not going to buy your tool," it makes it a lot easier for me, as the enlightened advocate internally to go to the team and say, "Hey, guys, this is a million dollars on the table that we're going to lose if you don't fix this problem." And so we also operate in the assumption when we hear from one customer there's 500 more we're not hearing from. And it always makes a big difference when we can associate this directly with efforts we've had, and that's what's punctuated a lot of efforts, where we can't find the resources or the team. There's a few truisms in software development. You're always short on money, you're always short on time, you're always short on people. So we need something to break those log jams at various points. This is true in every aspect of software development, whether it be a web application or corporate software development, anything like that. Another thing that tends to motivate us is interoperability and compliance to standards. We tend to like to position ourselves as able to work with anybody. And as part of that we look at our infusion of support for CSS and Dreamweaver that has huge implications for accessibility, and so as a result I can often couch things internally in terms of web standard support, browser interoperability, but knowing full well it leads to interoperability with other tools. Then also it's nice for a CEO and shareholder to feel like they're an industry leader. So positioning this as industry leadership makes another big difference. Now one more point. Back to this whole issue of procurement, one of the things I think is important when engaging with vendors Is not to simply say it's either accessible or it's not. I think the most important thing Kristine said is, we need to know your road map. Because the minute you disengage from a vendor, you're no longer a customer, and you've lost your ability to influence the way they're going to operate in the future. But by asking simple questions like, "where are you today? What are your plans for the future? And who are you working with to ensure that you're meeting these high standards?" can make a big difference in shaping what comes in successive releases, because everybody is struggling to get their expertise up to speed with what WGBA is going to need in order to achieve the goals they've set forward.
Jared: Thank you, and you brought up something I was going to address at the end, and that was the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. I'll take just a minute to just a plug here. The notice for proposed rule making for that IDEA, what is published June 21st in the Federal Register. As part of that, these are the proposed rules that will likely become law, but there is a public discussion period that will last until September 6th. So I would just take a moment to invite any of you out there to take a look at those standards. Because they really do address accessibility more specifically for textbook publishers and print, but take a look at the standards and see if you agree with them, and to make public comment on those. The national center will be posting the information on our web site shortly that will contain some of the language from the Federal Register, so you can find those relevant aspects, and then make comment on those, if you feel to. So stay tuned on our web site. I guess as a follow-up to your comments, all three of you mentioned standards, and you mentioned Section 508, and some of these other guidelines, CSS and HTML standards that are out there. When we talk about distance education, and the rate at which the technologies are changing, in my mind there seems to be a real lack of perhaps international standards in regards to many of these technologies. Is there a need for those standards, and so, you know, what can we do to influence those standards? And whose job would it be to implement those standards?
Soyini: That's a big question. Could you repeat that again?
Jared: Sure. I was just wondering, you know, Bob brought up, you know, issues of these multi-function applications, and when we talk about chats and captioning there isn't a lot out there as far as the guidelines, a lot don't address these specific technologies. Is there a need for us to push for international standards that are going to address these things?
Bob: But you know, before you can have standards you have to have best practice.
Soyini: Yes, I would have to agree with that.
Bob: You really- - Like this is one of the things where I have my most difficult conversations with standards organizations, is that there's a difference between a standard and a feature request. Within the technology space. That standards cement best practice in many places. And sometimes we have to put standards in front of the technology, but we should do so very carefully. In this specific space, I do not believe, it is my personal opinion, that we do not have a significant enough body of research that we can even form into best practice. Let alone shape into a standard. And I think it's very dangerous for those outside of the software development world to say, "Oh, this should be easy, just go do it." I hear that all the time. And I'm saying, well, actually, it's not that easy. And there's specific reasons. So I think that what I'd like to see is a lot more partnerships between industry and universities to understand what works, what doesn't, what kinds of things can we be doing better, and once we see at least some inklings of what we would like to set as best practice across the industry we can set them into the process of standards.
Soyini: I would have to completely second that emotion. I think that-- I mean we get calls all the time, and you know this is what the standard is, and it needs to be, and it drills down to this exact thing. And I mean I think, to a certain extent, we're following Section 508 standard, and this is what it says it needs to be. But we have customers that say, you know, they want to be very, very detailed on how we do it. And I think it is, to a certain extent, some of it is an enhancement or feature request, versus what, I guess, legally we need to do. But we're continually trying to have more conversations and discussions with some of our clients, like I'm having a discussion next month on universal design. Just so we can start having more discussions. And a dialogue on how we can be better, or what they need to provide going back to the training for the instructors. And just so that- - I mean it's not just, you know, Blackboard or the software industry. Everyone is involved in this effort.
Jared: Thank you. I'm going to go ahead and go to a few questions that have come in from listeners, and I would encourage if any of you have questions you would like our panelists to address you can submit those directly on the webcast page. There's a form there that you can fill out and submit, and we'll try to get to your question. The first one comes in from Howard Kramer, and he is at the University of Colorado at Boulder. And he asks, "Do you recommend any conferences or training venues for training about accessible distance ed and accessible media design?" What are some of the training resources conferences that you would recommend?
Soyini: I would definitely say EZ, Dr. Coombs, they have a lot of different training on designing accessible course or content using familiar software. So you know, adding captions and discussions to multidescriptions to multimedia, will make the same, uploading Word, being more accessible, and sharing spread sheets and Power Point, I think they provide a lot of training on the end user side, on how to use these tools. How to make their content more accessible.
Kristine: They also have some great handouts that can be used at an instructional resource center within the university, so that when professors go to set up their site they have some quick checklists that they can go through to help them remember what they need to be thinking about.
Bob: I believe there's also a wonderful conference that's run every year out of the University of Colorado by a gentleman named Howard Kramer, called "Accessing Higher Ground, " which I participated in the past, and is a very nice event, and is very higher ed focused. I think that for those that are, you know, I think that's a very specific higher ed session, and I think that's great, because we have a lot of-- there's a wonderful event every year in March known as C-SUN at Cal State University Northridge, and it's called a conference on disability and technology. It takes a very broad view, brings in people from a wide variety of segments, and sometimes I feel like, you know, educators can get a little bit lost in all of the activities that are going around C-SUN. So events like Accessing Higher Ground is really perfect. I think the other thing, and I believe that Kristine talked about this earlier, to the extent that you can, you know, looking for materials, training materials, when you're evaluating any online training materials, look for the section on accessibility. There should be at least one section dedicated to accessibility that talks about the issues and experience of what it's like for somebody with a disability to try and get over some of these obstacles. But then also look through the sections. Look through easy ones like, "Oh, I'm inserting an image, do they talk about how to deal with accessibility at those points?" and so forth.
Jared: And I guess I would just add a little bit of a shameless plug here for a new training resource WebAIM has recently delivered. WebAIM is a partner on NCDAE. Information is available on our web site at WebAIM.ORG, it's a very comprehensive training resource in regards to web accessibility. Another question that's come in I'll throw this out, what is the most exciting breakthrough in accessibility that each panelist has seen?
Kristine: I guess from my point of view- -
Jared: Go ahead, Kristine.
Kristine: And this is nothing that hasn't already been said, but from my point of view, being on the side that I'm on, with having to provide services and train faculty, is the integration of these accessibility features. And a lot of people, I don't think, know about them. For instance, with Macromedia and Dreamweaver, for just one example, you do have to turn on the accessibility features to get all of them, but once you turn them on it literally prompts you to put an alt-tag in, label your table correctly, and I find that just so incredibly useful, because it helps people to remember to do what they need to do, and it's relatively simple to do, most of them. So to me, that's one of the best things that have come up in the last year or so.
Jared: Anybody else want to take a stab at that question?
Soyini: Well, I think that- - I mean there are two things. There's personally, what I have found exciting is when I was put on this team, or became an accessibility coordinator, when we had Dr. Coombs come out and speak, and kind of just seen the software through his eyes, so to speak, I think it was very enlightening. I completely got another point of view that- - I mean coming into Blackboard I thought, QA was in YA, so this is the way an excited user. But the way he used the software, I got a completely different perspective, a more appreciative and more thoughtful way of looking at the software. And then seeing, after having a couple of audits, seeing the things that we needed to resolve being fixed in the software, and I think it made it helpful for everyone, sighted or not sighted. So those were like just a couple of situations where I thought was pretty exciting.
Jared: Great.
Bob: I take a slightly different tack. For me one of the things, one of the glaring absences in our standards work and our thought around accessibility is the exclusion of people with cognitive disabilities. The W3C provides the tip of the hat to this issue in one of the guidelines, stating text should be clear and simple, which of course, in most of the faculty that I've worked with have said, "I've spent my whole career learning how not to be clear and simple. I don't know how to do that." And so and it really doesn't get to some of the specific issues that we've seen in cognitive science. Some of the research I've seen lately, which has been pretty fascinating, has come out of Harvard, and work that David Rose has been doing. And really tying in cognitive science to design, and thinking about, how can we deliver concepts? How do we deliver ideas through images, through text, through interoperability? Some of the work that they've been doing, and tied specifically to the NIMAS standard, is really, really exciting. NIMAS is bringing a lot of new attention to this issue. It's providing new life to tools, the E-book reader market, which I think is going to be something where we'll not only help people that are blind, but provide tremendous possibilities for children and adults with learning disabilities. And new ways of interacting with ideas and concepts. So I think for me, seeing innovation and advancement in that specific field is one of the truly new things that we've seen in the last year.
Jared: Great, thank you. In regards to NIMAS and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, I was just handed a note, and maybe should clarify this a little bit. Apparently the NIMAS standards which apply specifically to textbook publishers, apparently that's not included in the current notice of proposed rule making that is part of IDEA, but that will be coming later. Anyway, I guess keep an eye on our web site, we'll keep you up to date as soon as that proposed rule making has been made public in regards to NIMAS, and hopeful we can look at it and comment and see what we can do to influence that for good. Another question that has come in, it is, what do each of the panelists see as the greatest barrier to true access of electronically mediated education? I guess I would add to that, what do you see as the trends? And where are we going in distance ed? Is it more to distance? Higher fidelity? What are those trends? And with that, what are going to be the barriers or implications of that?
Kristine: If I could start with that one, I think the biggest barrier to accessibility is how fast the technology grows and moves forward, and trying to keep up with the fast pace of that development. It just makes it, every time there's new technology there's new challenges and accessibility. And as far as the where we're headed, I think obviously more distance ed is going to occur, and a lot of people are going to be taking more and more classes on line, and distance-wise, whether it be Polycom or just through the web. And I think what we're going to see coming up is, for captioning, is going to be real-time voice captioning. And providing transcripts through real-time voice captioning, and training the instructor's voice to a program that would then actually caption on the fly. And it's an interesting area that I think we're going to get more and more into in the next couple of years.
Bob: I know that, of the issues that are brought to our attention, captioning is usually right towards the top of the list in regards to distance education, just because of the cost and the burden, right currently, that is involved in captioning. And it's been brought up several times. So yeah, I see that as something in the future that we really need to focus our efforts on and make that happen. Anybody else want to answer that?
Soyini: I would completely agree. That's an issue that comes up at Blackboard all the time, and how we can be better with, I mean, using that option? I mean you have to alt-tag and things like that, but we need more within the course. So definitely with the distance learning field growing, we'll definitely see that as a need at Blackboard, or for Blackboard.
Jared: Bob, what do you see as the trends and the implications of those trends in the future?
Bob: Well, I think one of the things that we're really struggling with right now is, that is with standards. Standards are written, W3C standards were published in 1998. And in 1998, I'm trying to think of what kind of technology I was using. It is not at all reflective of my reality today. And so I'm trying to constantly develop my own internal best practices, which can then be passed on as standards for groups that need it, you know, for individual institutions. But as the standards get older and older and older, there's a danger of fragmentation within the standards community. I'm starting to hear rumblings among different campuses saying, "We might need to write our own standards." And that, quite frankly, is one of the most alarming trends I'm seeing in accessibility today. As the person responsible for setting the product agenda for Dreamweaver and accessibility release on release, I can't make a special version of Dreamweaver for a specific campus. I can't make a specific version of Dreamweaver for a specific state. It's just not something we can do. So the danger in fragmentation is that we lose the tools for developers to meet those standards. You know, we need to try and make sure that we're harmonizing to the extent that we can, because we have such a wealth of knowledge and resources around the existing standards. So we might need to update those standards, but it would be a shame if we started to see a true fragmentation. Another trend that I think is going to be coming up is dealing with issues of rich media. A lot of people like to be upset about the accessibility of Flash in contrast to HTML. But the point that I like to make is the accessibility of Flash is that we're actively creating desk top application-like functionality, from a flat file format. We're seeing similar types of functionality emerge now in the form of AJAX. For those that aren't familiar with it, if you look at Google maps or Google mail, you're seeing this same type of functionality that comes in Flash. Unfortunately it's not accessible. We've seen a lot of interest and attention being paid to CSS and providing richer type of controls, richer types of navigation structures, using CSS. Unfortunately, it's accessible in that the text is available when the structures disappear. However, it's in no way, shape or form, useable once those structures degrade. So we haven't spent a lot of time thinking about, within the rich media space, how we're going to deliver accessibility. There was a wonderful presentation given at C-SUN this year from IBM, and some of the RDF work that's been done by Lisa Sieman to help structure this information, but we haven't seen that implemented anywhere, and we haven't seen support within the AT community for this yet. I see this as an important trend going forward because it's a question that we are absolutely positively going to have to answer.
Jared: Okay, thank you. One final question for you. What can the people that are listening, the ones that are tuned in, what can they do to help influence this? What can they do to help out those that are developing, the vendors, Macromedias, Blackboards, the Microsofts of the world? What can they be doing to help influence accessibility?
Bob: I have a favorite quote that I like to use, and I think that there's a couple of different levels of accessibility. Awareness is one, and we need to continue to push awareness of accessibility. I don't think we've achieved that goal at this point. But there's a level beyond it. And in designing with web standards, Jeffrey Zeldman talks about how to get wider adoption of web standards and accessibility. And one of the points he makes is we should stop trying to sell it. Probably the most important thing we can do is do good work and others will follow. What we want to do is start engaging designers where, and the people that create web content, where their heart lies. Doing good work. And so when someone sees a web site they say, "Damn that's good, how do I do that?" Say, "Oh, let me show you." So rather than spending our efforts telling everyone how important this is, we should be creating work that others want to emulate, and get a lot of examples out there, get a lot of people talking about it, make it exciting. The best example of this on the web is probably the CSS Zen Garden. It was a site designed to encourage people to use CSS and to show that CSS does not have to be boring. And they did such a good job now that people whose sites are recognized on this garden are listing it on their resume. They do it when no one else is paying attention. We don't have a garden for accessibility, and we desperately need one. The most important thing people listening to this call can do is create stunning web sites, beautiful web sites, that everyone appreciates, no matter who they are.
Jared: Thank you. Anybody else? Okay, with that, I want to thank our panelists today for being with us. Hopefully this has been very informative and educational and helpful to you. It has been to me. An item of news, the next National Center webcast will be held on September 14th, it will be at the same time, 1:00 p.m. Mountain. The topic will be accessibility of library and information services. So if you would like to register on our web site, on our main home page there's a link to become an affiliate, we'll go ahead and inform of that. Information will be on our web site shortly to allow you to register specifically for that webcast. And we hope to see you then. Again, thank you to our panelists, and thank you for all of you who have tuned in, and have a nice day. Thank you.