2014 Web Accessibility Survey

Transcription

1 2014 Web Accessibility Survey This survey Replaces the 2006 reporting requirements for web accessibility; Was developed by IBHE Web Accessibility Consortium and endorsed by Disabilities Advisory Committee; Is used to collect data for the Underrepresented Groups Report. Purpose: To encourage the formation of a committee or process that will collaborate with various constituencies on campus involved in the development of web based information, instruction, and internal processes, like registration. Information and Resources on Accessibility Illinois Information Technology Accessibility Act of 2007 (IITAA) (30 ILCS 587): This Act has specific implementation requirements for all four- year public institutions and is the baseline standard for web accessibility. Although the IITAA does not apply to community colleges at this time, community colleges are encouraged to use the IITAA requirements and benefit from the activities related to IITAA implementation in other state institutions. Web Application Accessibility: Web applications must be accessible to people with disabilities. Commercial web applications for course management, web mail, campus portals, and content management systems may not be accessible and may not allow modification. Institutions are encouraged to work with companies or open source projects to improve the accessibility of web applications. Technical staff who understand the technical details of accessibility can help create statewide networks to work with companies and open source developers to improve accessibility. Note: The IBHE Web Accessibility Consortium currently supports many multi- institutional efforts on improving the accessibility of web applications. Links: IBHE Web Accessibility Consortium Ill. Inform. Tech. Accessibility Act (IITAA) (30 ILCS 587) IITAA Standards IITAA Purchasing Group for Higher Education

2 I. Campus Involvement 1. Which campus constituencies address web accessibility issues? Please list below. UIS Office of Web Services 2. Please mark an "x" by each campus unit that participates in web accessibility issues. x a Academic Officer representative (i.e. Provost, Vice President, Chancellor) b Human Resources x c Public Affairs or Marketing d Foundation/Marketing x e Disability resources x f Instructional technology g Library x h Information technology i Faculty representative x j Student affairs x k Registrar, Admissions and Records l Procurement/Purchasing m Athletics x n Other units, please list the units who participate. UIS Office of Web Services, Chancellor's Division II. Activities 1. How do you communicate your web accessibility practices to faculty, staff, students and the general public? Every month our department conducts training on Web development and design. Web accessibility is a part of these training sessions. An online resource has been created for all campus Web Authors and Editors, which highlights accessibility guidelines and how to conduct accessibility checks for their websites. In addition, the Office of Web Services conducts accessibility checks throughout the year. 2. What unit or committee has responsibility for monitoring and coordinating the overall implementation of campus web accessibility activities at your institution? The UIS Office of Web Services in the Chancellor's Division. 3. How does your institution coordinate and promote accessible web design on campus to web developers and what training resources are available to assist developers in learning about accessible design practices? We continue to utilize the resources of the U of I's Office of Disability Resources and Educational Services, as well as the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC), which is a consortium of the Big Ten universities plus the University of Chicago.

3 4. What criteria does the institution or committees use to prioritize which web resources to make accessible? We begin our evaluation from the university homepage and then conduct FAE and W3C checks for all campus websites that reside on the official web server. For FAE, we validated all the web pages until the third level, starting with the homepage. 5. How are students involved in identifying web accessibility issues on campus? The Office of Web Services, which creates and maintains the campus home page, top- level recruiting pages, and department websites, continues to regularly ask for and receive feedback from our students regarding the primary UIS website. 6. How is web accessibility addressed in your campus strategic plan? The university s Web Policy highlights different aspects of Web accessibility. 7. What are your web accessibility procurement requirements? x Illinois Information Technology Accessibility Act (IITAA) standards IITAA Purchasing Group for Higher Education Other: 8. Does your campus participate in the IBHE Web Accessibility Consortium? x a Yes b No 9. Do you include web accessibility as part of your disability awareness activities / training on your campus? a Yes x b No III. Progress and Future Plans 1. Define your accessibility requirements. x Illinois Information Technology Accessibility Act of 2007 x Other: We continue to follow the options offered by the IBHE for Web Accessibility annual reporting. UIS has chosen the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines as its Accessibility Standard. These guidelines are part of the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), which develops strategies, guidelines, and resources to help make the Web accessible to people with disabilities. In addition, UIS utilizes the Functional Accessibility Evaluator (FAE, version 2.0 beta) developed by the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign.

4 2. List the evaluation tools and procedures you use to evaluate accessibility of web resources at your institution. For 2014, we conducted comprehensive accessibility evaluations [W3C Validator and FAE] for all official department and unit websites. 3. Summarize the progress your institution has made during the past year. a Web pages that have been evaluated for accessibility compliance and the results. We evaluated all university websites for There are 149 program and department websites that fall under four categories - Academic, Support Unit, Top- level, and the homepage. All these websites were validated using W3C HTML Validator and FAE. b Web sites brought into compliance. We evaluated 149 program and department websites using W3C HTML Validator and FAE. Of the 149 website, two websites will be re- evaluated in 2015 to meet Web accessibility standards. These websites are listed under 4b. Note: We were unable to resolve some scripts provided by external entities such as YouTube, Flickr, and older versions of Flash content. 4. Summarize your plans to improve in the next year. a A list of web sites you plan to evaluate for accessibility in the next year. We moved all the websites, except the two sites listed under 3b, to a content management system in The remaining two will be migrated to the new system in 2015, which will make them compliant with the accessibility standards. As always, we will conduct comprehensive checks FAE and W3C for all university websites. b A list of web sites you plan to bring into compliance during this next year. /development/ /career/ 5. How are you monitoring ongoing compliance with web accessibility requirements on your campus? For 2014, website Authors and Editors have begun to monitor their respective websites for Web accessibility. For example, when they add a photo to their website, they add the necessary attributes pertaining to accessibility. In addition, they follow a semantic structure for their web page content. The Office of Web Services has an online resource that allows individual departments to evaluate and fix Web accessibility. The Office of Web Services continues to monitor all campus websites for accessibility standards.

5 IV. Web Application Accessibility 1. List the web applications your institution uses in each of the following categories: a b c Course management systems x i Blackboard ii Moodle iii Sakai iv Angel v Desire2Learn vi Other: Campus portal system x i uportal ii Other: Web mail i Mirapoint ii Google Mail x iii Other: Outlook Web Access 2. List the activities and the progress of your campus during the past year to improve the accessibility of these web applications. The team leader for the Application and Development Team has taken a course in web accessibility and he applies what he has learned to the applications his team develops. 3. List your planned activities to improve the accessibility of these web applications during the next year. There are no formal activities or plans focused on improving the accessibilities of web applications.