-
>> Sheryl: My name
is Sheryl Burgstahler
-
and I direct Accessible
Technology Services
-
at the University of Washington.
-
And through our
Access Technology Center
-
and other services,
we’re making sure
-
that the IT
that we develop,
-
procure, and use at the
University of Washington
-
is accessible to all of our faculty,
students, staff, and visitors.
-
>> Sheryl: In the state of Washington
we now have a policy.
-
Policy 188 addresses
accessible technology
-
and so it requires that our
postsecondary institutions
-
in the state of Washington
make their IT accessible to all
-
students, faculty, staff,
and visitors with disabilities.
-
It requires that we be
proactive in doing that
-
by auditing the
software we have,
-
checking for accessibility, and making
plans for making it more accessible
-
either ourselves for our websites or
with vendors if it's a commercial product.
-
>> Patrick: My name is Patrick Pow.
-
I'm from University of Washington Tacoma.
-
My responsibility is technology.
-
I'm the vice chancellor
for information technology.
-
When I look at Policy 188
-
I actually look at it
as an opportunity
-
for us to enhance and do
better on our campus.
-
>> Sheryl: As one of our efforts
at the University of Washington
-
to ensure that all of the IT
-
that we procure, develop,
and use on our campuses
-
is accessible to all of our
faculty, students, and staff
-
who have disabilities,
-
we initiated a task force
at the highest level.
-
And so we include people from HR,
people from the disability services offices,
-
from our communications group,
from our accessible IT group,
-
but many other units as well
and we wrestle with how technology
-
can be made more accessible
to people with disabilities.
-
And so some of the things
that we do, for instance,
-
is have an inventory,
particularly of the common
-
most widely used software, websites,
and videos that we use on campus.
-
>> Dan: My name’s Dan.
-
The role that I’m playing
in the Policy 188 effort
-
is to help assemble
the inventory of IT on campus.
-
This is not a one person effort.
-
This is a multi-person effort.
-
>> Sheryl: We document what information
we know about those products.
-
As time allows, we test those
products for accessibility
-
and determine how we're going to
make the products more accessible,
-
often working with the vendors.
-
>> Narrator: One of the
task force’s priorities
-
has been to promote captioning
of videos used on campus.
-
>> Sheryl: We have helped initiate
a pilot actually where we
-
provide free captioning
for videos on campus.
-
It's a limited amount of money
so we’re not captioning all videos,
-
but we're captioning those
that have a high impact.
-
>> Narrator: Now that pilot has
turned into an ongoing service.
-
Some videos need both captions
and audio description.
-
Audio description is
additional narration
-
that describes the visuals
on the screen
-
for those who cannot see them.
-
The "Best of UW 2016,"
a year in review video,
-
used both captions
and audio description.
-
>> Gina: I'm Gina Hills.
-
I'm the web communications director
-
for University Marketing
and Communications.
-
This year's video was
all visual, with music.
-
We did close caption the video.
-
The first stage was we put a little thing
that said "music" on there.
-
>> Terrill: I'm Terrill Thompson.
-
I'm an IT accessibility specialist
-
at the University of Washington.
-
If you watch that video,
the music contributes significantly
-
to the emotion that
the video creates,
-
so it's featuring
a lot of the really
-
wonderful things
that have happened
-
at the university over
the last year in 2016
-
and the music
builds and swells
-
and just becomes much more
dramatic as the piece grows.
-
And so they revised the captions
to address that need
-
and really did an
excellent job I think
-
of capturing exactly
what the music is doing
-
throughout this piece
as it grows and swells.
-
The other thing that's interesting
about the Best of UW 2016
-
is that it was
entirely music.
-
There’s no spoken audio.
-
Therefore somebody
who can't see it
-
gets nothing out of it
other than the music.
-
So they hear the music,
-
And, it's a wonderful piece,
but to them it's just a music video.
-
They have no idea that
all these wonderful things
-
happened at the University.
-
So all those details
are missing for them
-
So that particularly is a video
that requires audio description.
-
>> Audio description: Words appear,
hash tag Best of UW 2016.
-
The Nobel Medal next to
David J. Thouless,
-
2016 Nobel Prize in Physics.
-
With President Obama,
-
Mary-Claire King,
National Medal of Science.
-
UW and Microsoft break record
for DNA data storage.
-
A collage of photos,
Inaugural Husky 100.
-
>> Gina: We covered
all bases, all audiences,
-
and didn't leave
anybody out
-
in terms of experiencing the
previous year at the university.
-
I think that this
is a good model
-
for what we can do
and what we should do
-
and what we should aspire to.
-
>> Narrator: Another task force priority
is helping faculty and staff
-
make PDFs and other
documents accessible,
-
so that someone who is
using a screen reader
-
can have the content
read to them.
-
>> Sheryl: In our pilot
on PDF accessibility
-
we're working with several
large units on our campus
-
and we're contracting
with some consultants
-
that will make
PDFs accessible
-
so they'll remediate
some of the PDFs
-
that have been developed
in an inaccessible way.
-
>> Gaby: My name is Gaby de Jongh,
and I’m an IT accessibility specialist
-
for Accessible Technology Services
at the University of Washington.
-
At the University of Washington
we have several hundred PDF documents
-
being uploaded to our websites,
probably on a daily basis,
-
and many if not all
of those PDF documents
-
are inaccessible to individuals
who use text to speech assistive technology
-
in order to access
those documents.
-
Accessible Technology Services has worked
with UW Bothell and UW Tacoma
-
on a pilot project for addressing
the large amount of PDF documents
-
that we have on
the tri campuses.
-
The three campuses worked
pretty closely together
-
using different tools to identify
the number of documents that were on the website
-
and then coming up with a plan
for going through those documents,
-
seeing if they actually really do need
to be listed on the website
-
or if they need to be taken down
-
and if they do need to be
listed on the website
-
what is the process,
-
what is the process that
we're going to go through
-
in order to make sure
that we’re going to
-
make all of those
PDFs accessible.
-
>> Narrator: The task force
helps develop and recruit
-
for capacity building institutes
on accessible IT
-
for participants from
units across campus.
-
>> Pete: My name is
Pete Graff and I work for
-
the Office of the Chief
Information Security Officer.
-
And a lot of the tools
that we develop,
-
some of them are used
on public facing websites
-
and we want to make sure that
we're doing the best job that we can
-
to ensure that the tools that we provide
are fully accessible.
-
>> Ana: My name is Ana Thompson.
-
I'm a learning technologist at
University of Washington Bothell.
-
I enjoy tremendously attending the
capacity building institutes
-
because it allows me to connect
with other professional peers
-
who see the importance
of universal design,
-
and also they help me learn.
-
They give me ideas on how we
can do what I'm doing better.
-
>> Narrator: UW’s IT Accessibility Liaisons
-
are recruited From the UW
capacity building institutes.
-
Liaisons engage online, participate in
three training meetings each year,
-
and promote the accessibility of IT
in their respective units.
-
>> Jodi: My name's Jodi
and I work for UW-IT.
-
I'm heartened by the commitment
that we have across campus
-
that we're not
alone in this endeavor
-
and that we all want
to do it together
-
and we have central resources
to help us do that.
-
>> Narrator: Annual capacity building
institutes on the UW campus
-
are also offered to representatives of
postsecondary institutions state-wide.
-
Participants share promising practices
for making IT more accessible.
-
>> Scott: Scott Towsley
from Yakima Valley College.
-
I’m the IT director,
director for e-learning,
-
and also the accessibility coordinator.
-
Actually coming to this training here
is going to give us some best practices,
-
some contacts across the state.
-
Some of the things that
we’re all looking at is
-
what software, common software
can we all use?
-
What are some initiatives
that everybody else is doing?
-
>> Carrie: My name is Carrie Powell
and I work at Centralia College
-
and I am the Policy 188 coordinator
at Centralia College.
-
It occurred to me that the
reason we have so much good,
-
so many good things going on
at our campus is that we,
-
my disability services director
and I attended a
-
capacity building institute at the
University of Washington three years ago
-
and it sparked an entire,
-
it led to a lot
of amazing things.
-
But the first, the key thing was,
we walked away knowing
-
that our task was to go
back to our campus
-
and form a work group
of interested stakeholders–
-
people from our IT department,
e-learning, disability services,
-
from our college relations,
from our legal services,
-
we just we got a
group of people together
-
just based on asking
and people said, "Sure,"
-
and so that was a key idea
-
that we took away from that
first capacity building institute.
-
>> Bridget: My name
is Bridget Irish
-
and I work at The
Evergreen State College
-
located in Olympia, Washington.
-
My official position is as
curricular technology support to faculty.
-
At The Evergreen State College,
-
some ways in which
we try to make
-
our IT resources and
tools more accessible
-
is one, by providing
faculty with a template,
-
a template for use in Canvas
-
as well as a variety of templates
available for use with WordPress.
-
>> Carly: I’m Carly Gerard.
-
I work at Western Washington University
as a web accessibility developer.
-
One of our first starting points
in making IT accessible is training.
-
Once we have people who
understand where to begin,
-
what accessibility features
to look for,
-
we can then help them,
you know, manage their websites.
-
They can look for
any accessibility issues.
-
We host training sessions
both online and in person.
-
So our online training
rolled out a few months ago
-
and we’ve had over
200 people enrolled
-
before the end of the year
who have now taken the training
-
and they can continue
to edit their content
-
knowing these accessibility features.
-
We do also offer
an in-person training
-
for those who may not be as
comfortable with online learning.
-
>> Craig: My name is Craig Kerr.
-
I’m the director for services
for students with disabilities
-
at Edmonds Community College.
-
Our professional
development committee
-
what we’re going around
to each division
-
to do trainings on how
to make accessible documents.
-
Working with the professional
development committee that’s based
-
of faculty
sharing with faculty
-
the ways to make their
documents accessible
-
is a key piece because
you’re talking peer to peer.
-
>> Amy: Hi, my name
is Amy Rovner
-
and I am an instructional designer
and accessible IT coordinator
-
at Shoreline Community College.
-
We are also working on areas
of captioning for our videos,
-
that’s a big thing to
make sure everyone can
-
hear and absorb the
content in the videos.
-
We've added Ally to
our Canvas instance
-
so that students who
may or may not have
-
an official accommodation
-
are able to access accessible
versions of documents,
-
audible versions of documents,
-
even a braille, electronic
braille version of documents
-
right away in real time.
-
>> Agnes: My name is Agnes Figueroa.
-
I work at Renton Technical College
-
and I’m currently the deputy CIO,
chief information officer.
-
We started with convening
an accessibility advisory committee.
-
In this group we try
to gather together
-
people from various
areas of campus
-
so we have representatives
from human resources,
-
from the library,
from e-learning ,
-
from IT,
the disability office,
-
faculty members.
-
>> David: I’m David Engebretson Jr.
-
and I’m at Western
Washington University
-
and I’m the digital technologies
accessibility coordinator.
-
We’ve made some real efforts to
create awareness about accessibility
-
and I think that’s kind of been
the biggest change is that
-
our community is becoming
aware of the need
-
for accessible and inclusive design.
-
As a blind person, I notice
just little changes
-
making a big difference
in the accessibility.
-
Headings on webpages and
educational materials in general,
-
captions in videos,
and
-
accessible graphics.
-
>> Jeremy: My name is Jeremy Seda
-
and I work for Big Bend Community College
in Moses Lake
-
as the web and
multimedia specialist.
-
It feels just so much
more personal to meet
-
with other folks
around this similar goal
-
and to really come together in a
collaborative fashion to brainstorm
-
and to really work out the details
of a problem that we're all facing.
-
>> Clay: My name is Clay Krauss.
-
I work for Tacoma Community College.
-
I'm the information technology
director there on campus.
-
One of the most important things
is bringing people together
-
and forming those networks,
-
the formal networks
and the informal networks,
-
to dialogue and
share ideas
-
regarding accessible
information technology.
-
>> Zach: My name is Zach Lattin.
-
I'm an assistive technology and IT
accessibility specialist at Clark College.
-
I have a really personal stake
in this because I am,
-
have been blind since birth,
so I use assistive technology myself.
-
We don't have to make
this policy on our own.
-
We can work with people
all over the place
-
and come up with the rising tide
that lifts all boats, I think.