STATE OF ILLINOIS BOARD OF HIGHER EDUCATION HIGHER EDUCATION COOPERATION ACT FISCAL YEAR RENEWAL APPLICATION Cover Page

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1 STATE OF ILLINOIS BOARD OF HIGHER EDUCATION HIGHER EDUCATION COOPERATION ACT FISCAL YEAR 2009 ATTACHMENT 1 RENEWAL APPLICATION Cover Page Category of Proposal: Access & Affordability Accountability & Productivity X Disabilities Diversification P-20 Persistence Student Empowerment Proposal Title Illinois Web Accessibility Consortium (Limit to total of 70 characters and/or spaces) (For BHE use only) Total Fiscal Year 2009 Total Fiscal Year 2009 Funds Requested $262,407 Funds Awarded The undersigned institution or institutions understand that this proposal (including applicable attachments 1-10) represents an offer, which if accepted by the Illinois Board of Higher Education in writing, will become part of a grant agreement subject to the Illinois Grant Funds Recovery Act and all other applicable laws governing contracts and agreements in the State of Illinois. If the undersigned institution or institutions intend to use a Fiscal Agent, the undersigned institution or institutions further authorize the Fiscal Agent listed in this application to act as the agent and to execute on behalf of the undersigned institution or institutions any amendments to any grant agreement or contract which is executed as a result of this proposal, which amendments may include but are not limited to changes in the grant amounts, evaluation procedures, purposes or budget. Project Director Jon R. Gunderson, Ph.D. (print or type) Title/Department: Disability Services and Educational Services Mailing address: Rehabilitation Education Center, 1207 S. Oak Street, Champaign, IL Telephone: (217) FAX: (217) jongund@uiuc.edu 1

2 APPLICANT INSTITUTION/ Fiscal Agent The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Address 1901 South First Street, Suite A Champaign, IL President/CEO s Signature TYPE NAME AND TITLE OF SIGNATORY: 2

3 ATTACHMENT 1 (continued) PARTICIPATING INSTITUTIONS Institution: Address: Telephone: President/CEO s Signature TYPE NAME AND TITLE OF SIGNATORY Institution: Address: Telephone: President/CEO s Signature TYPE NAME AND TITLE OF SIGNATORY Institution: Address: Telephone: President/CEO s Signature TYPE NAME AND TITLE OF SIGNATORY Institution: Address: Telephone: President/CEO s Signature TYPE NAME AND TITLE OF SIGNATORY Institution: Address: Institution: Address: Telephone: Telephone: 3

4 This agreement may be executed in separate original counterparts; and when each party has signed an original thereof and they are assembled, they shall constitute one complete binding agreement, the same as if all parties had executed the same agreement. Effective: July 1, 2008 GRANTOR: ILLINOIS BOARD OF HIGHER EDUCATION By: Judy Erwin Date Executive Director By: Michael S. Baumgartner Date Executive Deputy Director By: Donald Sevener Date Deputy Director of External Relations 4

5 ATTACHMENT 2 FY2009 Innovation Grants: HECA Renewal Application PROJECT SYNOPSIS The Illinois Board of Higher Education (IBHE) Web Accessibility Consortium is building a statewide network of information technology (IT) professionals, disability service professionals, faculty and other staff to work together to improve the functional accessibility of web technologies to people with disabilities. The consortium enhances the ability of the participants to advocate for the accessibility of administrative and instructional web resources on their campuses to meet the new Illinois Information Technology Accessibility Act (IITAA) requirements. IBHE has made web accessibility a priority for all higher educational institutions in the state by requiring each institution to report their current state of web accessibility and their plans to improve web accessibility 1 on their campuses. This reporting becomes even more important as a means to help universities measure their compliance with IITAA requirements. The work of consortium has had a major impact at the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign by stimulating a Provost s Initiative to add four new positions at the university to improve the accessibility of administrative web resources. Most IT professionals, faculty and staff who develop and define the purchasing requirements for web technologies do not understand very much about web accessibility or what they should do to increase functional accessibility and usability of web resources to people with disabilities. The resources requested in this proposal will continue to support participants by providing training and more importantly publically available tools to facilitate their understanding, evaluation and use of accessible design techniques in the web resources they develop and purchase for their campuses. The resources being developed through the IBHE consortium are available online for use by any Illinois community college or baccalaureate institution to support their training and policy efforts to improve knowledge of accessible design techniques and evaluation of functional accessibility features of web resources. The training resources of the consortium support the development of localized human resources and infrastructure on each campus for web developers, faculty and staff to create and evaluate the accessibility of web resources. The focus is to integrate accessibility into mainstream web development training materials so that all developers learn about accessibility as a part of their standard course work. Online training resources pertaining to accessible design will be available whenever and wherever they are required. Consortiums have been organized to improve the accessibility of purchased web resources for course management systems (Blackboard, Desire2Learn), library resources (CARLI, EBSCO, Elsevier), HTML Design Best Practices and communications (webmail). In year three the IBHE group will specifically look at content management systems and provide information on the accessibility features and templating options to improve accessibility. Tools continue to be developed and enhanced to make it easier for people to evaluate their web resources for accessibility. The Functional Accessibility Evaluator (FAE) and the Firefox Accessibility Extension are being enhanced through improved evaluation rules, reporting features and the ability to analyze dynamically generates web resources. FAE is already being used by seven of the 13 baccalaureate institutions to report on the accessibility of their web resources. Microsoft Office continues to be a major authoring tool for instructors, staff and administrators for creating electronic documents for sharing with students, faculty, staff and the general public, and are consistently inaccessible when they are published in either their native format, as Adobe PDF files or as HTML documents. It is impractical to train all of the people that use Office on accessibility techniques and expect them to retain the information without some type of feedback. This proposal requests resources to support the development of an add-in to Microsoft Office to provide direct feedback to authors on the accessibility of their documents before publishing them or converting them to other formats. An automated tool, along with on-line training materials, provides an opportunity for people to learn about accessibility and publish accessible version when they are creating the documents. 1 Public University Web Accessibility Evaluation, Plans for Improvement, and Annual Reporting Requirements, 5

6 ATTACHMENT 3 FY2009 Innovation Grants: HECA Renewal Application PROJECT NARRATIVE IBHE Web Accessibility Consortium Background A review of IBHE Web Accessibility Reports shows an overwhelming interest in meeting more than just the minimal Section 508 Web Accessibility Standards [1] and using tools that estimate the use of best practices that support functional accessibility. Twelve out of thirteen four-year institutions [2] have functional accessibility goals based on either the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Double-A [3] or Illinois Web Accessibility Standard (IWAS) which has been revised for the Illinois Information Technology Accessibility Act (IITAA) requirements [4]. With the legislature unanimously passing the IITAA there is now a default standard for all public universities in the state of Illinois. Seven out of thirteen institutions [2] used the Functional Accessibility Evaluator [5] (FAE) tool to evaluate web resources for their web accessibility report to IBHE and part of the resources requested for year three will be to create a version of FAE that reports directly on IITAA web accessibility standards. It is interesting to note that people using FAE reported many more accessibility problems than campuses not using FAE. The difference is due to FAE s more extensive rules for automatically assessing and rating the accessibility of web resources. Other web accessibility evaluation tools can automatically check for only a few web accessibility requirements, like missing ALT text for images and LABELs for form controls, all other accessibility checks are considered manual checks to be performed by the developer through inspecting the HTML code. The manual checks are a labor intensive process and, therefore, are rarely or selectively done. FAE actually estimates the implementation of most Section 508 and WCAG 1.0 Double-A conformance requirements by testing for the use of icita HTML Accessibility Best Practices [6], therefore FAE provides a more thorough automated process that uncovers more accessibility issues than other evaluation tools. So it is likely institutions not using FAE are over reporting the accessibility of their web resources. Background Summary Twelve of thirteen universities have identified conformance with functional accessibility standards of W3C WCAG Double-A conformance or the Illinois Web Accessibility Standard (IWAS) as their goal or standard Seven of thirteen universities used the Functional Accessibility Evaluator (FAE) as part of their report on web accessibility to IBHE FAE provides a more focused lens on accessibility than other web accessibility evaluation tools used by the other schools. Other evaluation tools require significantly more manual testing by developers to assess accessibility than using FAE. The time and training required for these manual tests many times exceeds the resources available and therefore only the automated test results are reported and it is assumed the other test would pass. 3 Year Goals of the Consortium The goal of the three year project is to improve the functional accessibility of web resources for both four year and community colleges in Illinois by improving collaboration between institutions and supporting the development of human resources on each campus to understand and implement improved IITAA requirements. The theme of the best practices approach to implementation of the IITAA requirements is improving accessibility to everyone, including people with disabilities through the use of web standards and web development techniques that allow for web resources to be compatible with a wider range of technologies and user preferences and make it easier for developers to develop and maintain web resources. The icita HTML Best Practice techniques are based on the original premise of the web of supporting interoperability (i.e. create a resource once and have a wide variety of 6

7 technologies access the resource) and are being adopted by the larger web development community to reduce maintenance costs of web resources, extend the time a web resource remains usable and make web resources compatible with portable web devices like Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) and cell phones. One of the major successes of this IBHE innovation grant in the first 18 months is at the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign (UIUC). The Provost at UIUC has funded four new positions to improve the accessibility of administrative resources and campus wide web applications. The Provost initiative effectively doubles the effectiveness of the innovation grant and is being coordinated by the Chief Information Technology Officer (CIO) of the university. Two of the four positions relate directly to the goals of the IBHE Web Accessibility Consortium by supporting the development of the Functional Accessibility Evaluator (FAE) and developing on-line training materials for web accessibility. The contributions of these two positions will greatly improve the impact of the consortium. The Provost initiative will also serve as one model for other universities and community colleges to follow in how to implement campus wide accessibility policies and ensure compliance with the IITAA. Another major accomplishment of the Provost initiative is that responsibility for implementation is not in the disability services office, but in the CIOs office moving web accessibility into the mainstream of campus IT efforts. The Provost initiative was initiated before the passing of the IITAA, demonstrating the power of the consortium to effect system change on campus. Online Training Resources Online training specifically on how to use the icita best practices to implement IITAA requirements are needed to support the development of local training resources and to provide just in time training to faculty, staff and students on web accessibility. The training materials are freely available to anyone wanting to use them as is or modify them for local training purposes. The availability of on-line training resources insures that knowledge of accessible design is available to developers at any time to help them implement the IITAA requirements. In addition to creating and sharing online resources the consortium also will support the development and publicity of accessibility training events. Integration Accessibility into Mainstream Training Materials The long term solution to accessible design is to integrate accessibility information into the mainstream instructional materials used to teach web developers, faculty and staff how to create materials for the web. Currently most mainstream training materials do not mention accessibility or when they do they point people to the Section 508 requirements or the W3C Web Content Accessibility guidelines. Yet most of the design examples in the training materials themselves do not adhere to the accessibility requirements they reference. This provides a strong message to students that accessibility is not very important and that it is an optional part of web design (i.e. only do this weh you are asked or required to do). The integration of accessibility needs to be integrated into all design examples and supporting text needs to explain how accessible design based on web standards supports all users by making web resources compatible with a wider range of technologies, allow users more flexibility in how they user web resources and make it more efficient for web developers to create and maintain web resources. IBHE Web Accessibility Awareness Website Raising awareness of web accessibility was identified as one of the most important accessibility issues in the first year of the IBHE Web Accessibility Consortium. There are many web awareness materials that focus on the needs of people with disabilities and the problems they have in accessing and using the web resources. While understanding the needs of people with disabilities is an important motivator for web developers and administrators to improve web accessibility it does not provide them with the knowledge or the strategies that will lead them to changing how they develop or manage web resources actually be more accessible. Web developers, purchasing agents and administrators need to hear and learn from their peers on how they have moved from inaccessible to accessible design patterns for web accessibility. Purchasing Accessible Web Resources and Services Collaboration is critical for ensuring purchased web technologies and services comply with the requirements of IITAA web requirements. Higher educational institutions need to present an organized and unified voice on accessibility to companies developing web technologies and this includes the purchasing agents of the higher educational institutions. Currently accessibility issues are rarely heard or are ignored by companies providing web services due to the low number of people who actually make accessibility complaints or when people do make complaints the companies do not have defined procedures or policies to address accessibility issues. When 7

8 companies respond to RFPs from higher educational institutions that include accessibility requirements they know to answer that their product is accessible and are rarely challenged or asked to actually demonstrate accessibility features. It is not until after the product is purchased and the accessibility problems are encountered that the accessibility claims are found to be fraudulent. Purchasing agents therefore need to have skills and tools to help them validate the accessibility claims made by companies. In the case of existing web services collaborations have been developed and sustained as a part of the IBHE Web Accessibility Collaboration to work with companies that provide library bibliographic and cataloging services, course management tools and web mail applications. In addition to working directly with companies on technology that has already been purchased by institutions of higher education there needs to be improved accessibility support in purchasing web technologies. Improving Functional Accessibility Evaluation Tools HTML Evaluation Tools The Illinois Functional Accessibility Evaluator (FAE) needs to be enhanced and improved to refine accessibility rules, improve reports and support evaluation of web applications. FAE is designed to estimate the use of the icita HTML Best Practices. The power of FAE is that it eliminates the need for most of the costly and time consuming manual checks for accessibility required by other competing tools since it is looking for the patterns of markup identified in the icita Best Practices. FAE is a powerful tool for providing a unified voice on web accessibility for the inter-institutional collaborations on improving the accessibility of purchased web technologies. Using FAE also provides more accurate measures of the level of accessibility for the annual IBHE Web Accessibility reporting requirements and FAE reports make it easier to compare the accessibility of web resources between institutions. Microsoft Office and Adobe PDF Microsoft Office and Adobe PDF documents continue to be a major authoring format for instructional and administrative content, especially for instructors and staff that do not have skills in HTML technologies. The Microsoft Office and Adobe PDF documents they create are not usually very accessible since the authors have little understanding of the needs of people with disabilities, the authoring tools they use to create documents provide no feedback on the accessibility of what they create and the document formats themselves have limitations in their ability to create accessible content. There are currently no public tools available to instructions and staff to help them understand or fix the accessibility of the materials. Microsoft Office is also one of the most popular authoring tools for creating Adobe PDF document through the use of Adobe Acrobat software. Features need to be added to Microsoft Office to make it easier for students, instructors and staff to learn about the level of accessibility web of the Office documents as they create and help them to fix accessibility problems. FAE needs to be extended to support the evaluation of documents in both Adobe PDF and native Office formats, although Adobe PDF is a higher priority since its accessibility features are more defined than the accessibility features for Microsoft Office. Importance of Tools Tools have extended the capabilities of humankind for thousands of years and the tool development requested in this proposal will multiply the human resources capabilities for assessing the accessibility of campus web resources by orders of magnitude more than just training alone. Project Goals Increase accessibility of web resources in higher education in Illinois by improving the capabilities of administrators, faculty, staff and students to understand and evaluate the accessibility of various web technologies o o o o o On-line training resources Integration of accessibility into mainstream web development instructional materials IBHE Web Accessibility Web Site Functional Accessibility Evaluator Tool Microsoft Office Accessibility Evaluation Add-in Develop local expertise and training opportunities on web accessibility o Development of online training resources 8

9 o Publicizing web accessibility training events Develop consortiums to address the accessibility of purchased web resources and create accessibility guides for targeted products to help institutions make informed decisions. o o o o Course Management Tools (Blackboard, Desire2Learn) Content Management Systems Web mail applications (Mirapoint, Zimbra) Library Bibliographic and Cataloging Resources (EBSCO, ExLibris, Elsevier) Develop best practices and tools to support the evaluation of the best practices for supporting functional web accessibility. o o o o HTML Best Practices Adobe PDF Best Practices Microsoft Office Best Practices Functional Accessibility Evaluator On-line Training Resources Progress to Date The on-line training resources have been used in many web accessibility workshops around the state to improve the knowledge and skills of web developers, instructors, staff and administrators with understanding the accessibility of various web technologies and the requirements for functional accessibility. Many the people attending these workshops are integrating this information into its their own training or creating new training opportunities at their institutions. The following ton-line raining modules have been developed: Functional Accessibility Testing, Accessible Web Design, creating accessible Microsoft Office documents and creating accessible Adobe PDF documents. The consortium was able to bring in Greg Pisoky from Adobe to do a series of three workshops on Adobe PDF in southern, central and northern Illinois. The resources used in these workshops are available to participants for use or modification in their own workshops. Participants are being encouraged to integrate the concepts and techniques into existing web development courses and workshops on their campus, rather than create separate courses on web accessibility. Summary of Training Events Events include one day workshops, two day courses and online classes using the resources developed by the consortium since is formation in November of 2006: Accessible Web Design U. Illinois at Urbana/Champaign: 11 sessions Harper College: 2 sessions Illinois Central College: 1 session Western Illinois University: 3 sessions Northern Illinois University: 4 sessions Eastern Illinois University: 3 sessions Adobe PDF Accessibility Illinois at Urbana/Champaign: 3 sessions Harper College: 1 session Western Illinois University: 3 sessions EIU: 3 sessions Office Accessibility Illinois at Urbana/Champaign: 7 sessions Western Illinois University: 3 sessions Functional Accessibility Testing Illinois at Urbana/Champaign: 3 sessions Harper College: 3 sessions Plans for Year 3 The plans for year three include continuing the development of on-line training materials for evaluating web resources for accessibility, universal design using web standards based on Illinois Information Technology Accessibility Act standards and the icita HTML Best Practices, Microsoft Office and Adobe PDF. In addition during year three we will be adding resources related making Web 2.0 technologies more accessible to people with disabilities, captioning technologies for videos and Flash technology. 9

10 Summary On-line Training Materials Functional accessibility testing and evaluation Microsoft Office accessible authoring techniques Adobe PDF accessible authoring techniques Universal Web Design using web standards New: Web 2.0 applications accessibility with ARIA specifications New: Captioning and text descriptions for video and audio resources New: Flash technology Integration of Accessibility into Mainstream Training Materials Progress to Date The integration of accessibility information into mainstream training materials was identified as a critical access strategy by the working group during the first year and becomes a major goal of the collaboration. A major objective 2 nd year of the grant is to identify several key resources that would make the biggest impact on accessibility and determine what needs to be done to integrate accessibility into these resources. Professor Terry Morris of Harper College and Professor Mark DuBois of Illinois Central Community College have both expressed interest in contributing to this effort. Both professors teach web development courses at their respective institutions and Professor Morris is the Author of a popular web authoring text book that includes many of the icita HTML Best Practices already. Professors Morris and DuBois are leaders in the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and are interested in working with the organization to promote efforts to increase awareness of the wider web development community about accessibility issues and techniques to improve the functional accessibility of web resources. Terry Morris has proposed the development of a certificate program related to web accessibility that would be offered online by Harper College that would include web accessibility requirements of the Illinois Information Technology Accessibility Act. Plans for Year 3 The plans for year three is to continue to implement the changes in resources that are identified in the second year of the grant and to support efforts to create a certificate program with WOW. IBHE Web Accessibility Awareness Website Progress to Date A prototype of the IBHE Web Accessibility Awareness web site was developed through the reallocation of funds from Year 1. The prototype was discussed in detail at the January 2008 meeting of the IBHE Web Accessibility Consortium on the University of Illinois Urbana/Champaign campus and specifications for public site were identified during the meeting. The initial web site will be completed by the summer of 2008 and the web site will focus on resources directed primarily at web developers to support their efforts in implementing Illinois Information Technology Accessibility Act (IITAA) at their institutions. An important feature of the website is going beyond helping them understand the problems that people with disabilities have in accessing web resources, to helping web developers understand what they need to do to change the way they design and maintain web resources. The web site will include video of web masters discussing how they have changed their web development behavior and how this change has made their development more efficient, so actually saving development and maintenance costs. This counters the current notion that web accessibility is a costly and difficult process. Resources for administrators will be added during Year 3 so they can better understand the operational differences and advantages that accessible design bring to the web development process. Scope of Work for Year 2 Development Revise site based on consortium and web-developer feedback from FTF meeting at UIUC Further development of website to contain information for web developers to raise awareness of Web Accessibility issues faced by people with disabilities and learn about solution strategies and resources Ensure site is compliant with both icita Best Practices and IITAA standards Add gallery of exemplary sites Create form for adding information Gather existing simulations and user videos from existing sites and obtain permission to use 10

11 Collect multimedia contributions from participating institutions and other sources Work with IBHE Web Accessibility Consortium on website and best practices development Plans for Year 3 During year three of the project resources will be updated to include information on Web 2.0 accessibility issues and information for administrators talking about the operational changes needed for accessible web design and how accessible design has improved web development. Purchasing Accessible Web Resources Training Resources and Tools for Purchasing Agents One of the potential biggest impacts of the Illinois Information Technology Accessibility Act (IITAA) is in the area of purchase of web services and resources. There are two main parts to the purchasing issues. The first is during the Request for Proposal (RFP) process when purchasing decisions are being made and the second is working with companies with existing contracts with higher educational institutions. In the RFP process it is currently pretty well understood that companies can make accessibility claims without ever being seriously challenged on the validity of the changes. The Section 508 Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) filled out by companies on their electronic products and services is designed to give purchasing agents and consumer information on the accessibility of products they are purchasing. Unfortunately virtually all companies claim on their VPATs that they comply with accessibility requirements. Purchasing agents have little skill or time to verify the accessibility claims made by companies leading to the purchasing of technologies that are not accessible to people with disabilities. Purchasing agents need training, but more importantly tools like the Functional Accessibility Evaluator (FAE) and the Firefox Accessibility Extension that can quickly and efficiently generate accessibility reports within minutes to estimate the validity of the claims made by companies. Since the tools to generate the reports are freely available they become a means for purchasing agents and companies to discuss discrepancies in the accessibility claims made by a company. On-line resources and training on testing for IITAA requirements will be developed specifically for purchasing agents during Year 2 and FAE and the Firefox Accessibility Extension will be made available to purchasing agents to evaluate the accessibility claims of vendors. A teleconference with purchasing agents will start in early in April to learn what type of training and knowledge is needed by purchasing agents to help them enforce IITAA accessibility requirements. In addition to tools and training the consortium will be developing accessibility buying guides. In year two a buying guide will be developed for web mail applications and during year three content management systems. Collaborations After purchasing a product the responsibility for the product accessibility is moved out of the purchasing office and to the users of the web resource or service being used on campus. The most effective way to work with companies in this situation is develop consortiums of institutions and organizations to show the company the breath of institutions that want improved accessibility of their resource or service. The following consortiums have been developed and supported by the IBHE Web Accessibility Consortium. Blackboard Course Management System The working group is now an official Blackboard user group [8] and has several working groups: general accessibility, testing existing products for accessibility, design guidelines for new products and documentation group. The Blackboard accessibility consortium attained this status partly by gathering letters of support from Chief Educational Technology Officers from around the county and the State of Illinois to encourage Blackboard to allocate more resources to customer support for people with disabilities and improve the integration of accessibility testing into their internal quality assurance processes. Hadi Bargi Rangin of the University of Illinois was invited to Blackboard to on August of 2007 to help Blackboard developers and executives understand accessibility issues. The working group has been able to preview next generation Web 2.0 technologies and provide feedback on the accessibility of the prototypes. The consortium will continue to work with Blackboard to help them understand the concepts of accessible design and to provide feedback on their existing and future products. 11

12 CARLI Library Catalog Consortium The CARLI Library consortium [9] consists of most of the higher education and community college libraries in Illinois to provide a means for people to find, view and checkout books from the collections of libraries from around the state. The current system is owned by exlibris and has many accessibility problems, and the company which developed the current web service was recently purchased by exlibria and they have made a decision to discontinue development of the current software, so no major accessibility enhancements can be made at this time. The consortium is working with exlibris on the accessibility of their next generation cataloging product, which at some future date may be purchased by CARLI to replace the current system. We currently have access to some of the beta versions of the new exlibris system to do accessibility evaluations and have made two trips to visit exlibris developers in Chicago to help them understand accessibility issues of their designs. EBSCO On-line Bibliographic Services The EBSCO bibliographic database people have been very eager to work with our consortium [10] to improve the accessibility of their bibliographic search engine and result pages. The consortium meets with the EBSCO development team approximately once every other month. EBSCO has already added heading markup and form control labels in their latest release in April and plans future accessibility enhancements for the summer and fall releases. This company is an example of a company just waiting for someone to tell them how to improve accessibility. Since the consortiums initial contact with them they have been very diligent in including accessibility in their new releases. Elsevier On-line Bibliographic Services The Elsevier working group is still forming and does not have the managerial support for accessibility found with EBSCO. The user interface group though is very interested in learning more about how to improve the usability of their interfaces for people with disabilities and webinars and other trainin has been provided them to improve the accessibility of Elsevier technlogies. The group has evaluated the current Elsivier interfaces and the company is now using that information to plan accessibility improvements. The group meets approximately once per month. Web Mail Working Group The web mail working group [11] is currently transforming from a general discussion of web mail accessibility to working specifically with Mirapoint on improving the accessibility of their next generation web 2.0 interface version which mimics the features and behaviors of Microsoft Outlook. The group has created an initial set of requirements for improving web mail navigation and these requirements are currently under review by Mirapoint managers for implementation. Plans for Year 3 The plans are to continue to develop and expand the participation in the existing consortiums for blackboard, library services and web mail. New consortiums will be formed to address content management systems used to create and maintain administrative websites, courseware providers to include information on accessible standards based web design in the their prepackaged training materials and the provision of captioning and text transcriptions for pod casting and working with pod casting websites like itunes University to improve the accessibility of finding and downloading pod casts of instructional materials. The consortium will continue to work with the IBHE Disability Access Committee on increasing the web accessibility reporting requirements of universities and higher education institutions. Without an increase in reporting requirements universities and community colleges will only focus on a very narrow set of websites for improving accessibility. If web applications become part of the web resources institutions of higher education are required to report on then they will be more likely to allocate resources to improve their accessibility. Summary of Plans for Year 3 Continue the development and recruiting of participants in existing web 2.0 applications: Blackboard, CARL (exlibris), EBSCO, Elsivier and Webmail. Develop new consortiums for other web 2.0 applications, including course management systems like Desire2Learn, Angel and pod casting websites like itunes University. Develop a consortium on accessible content management systems for administrative websites. 12

13 Propose to IBHE Disability Access Committee (DAC) changes in accessibility reporting requirements to include additional administrative websites, evaluation of some web applications frequently used by students and information on personnel allocations for accessibility of static and web applications. Tools Evaluating Accessible Web Resources Best Practices Working Group An important addition to the tool development during Year 2 was a best practices working group. The goal of the group is to refine the best practices for web development (HTML, Microsoft Office, Adobe PDF and Flash technologies) and setup rules that can be used by evaluation tools to estimate the use of the best practices. Participation is open to any one wishing to support the goals of this effort. The group is currently defining rules for use in the Illinois Information Technology Accessibility Act and how the reporting of the results would differ from the icita HTML Best Practices. FAE and the Firefox Accessibility Extension Functional Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool Progress The Functional Web Accessibility Evaluator [5] (FAE) tool is used by 7 of the 13 higher educational institutions for reporting to IBHE their current state of web accessibility. With IBHE support the Firefox Accessibility Extension [12] can now send the content from dynamically generated web pages to FAE for analysis. This is the only free publicly available system for test the accessibility of dynamically generated web pages, which is becoming a larger part of the web, especially as Web 2.0 applications supplant desktop applications. FAE also supports user accounts and user accounts are needed for security purposes to keep out spam bots, but user accounts also met a user demand of privacy of their evaluations, so now the archived reports are limited to the reports generated by the user. Improvements in the reporting interface provide more information on which pages passed and do not pass accessibility rules. Rules have also been updated based on feedback from users reporting bugs and problems with rules and rules will continue to be updated to reflect the requirements of the Illinois Information Technology Accessibility A.ct Functional Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool Plans Resources are requested to continue to improve the reporting interfaces of FAE, and to add features that will allow website evaluations to be combined to create campus wide reports and compared with previous reports to track accessibility improvement over time. FAE reports are used by administrators to prioritize the resources required to improve the accessibility of the websites they manage. The reporting interface needs to be improved to make it easier for web developers to identify and repair accessibility problems. New features include reporting line number (when available) for missing ALT text for an image. Other features include collecting reports from the Firefox Accessibility Extension requests to make it easier to share accessibility reports on web applications. This will become even more important as demand increases to improve the accessibility of web applications used by students, faculty and staff. As the number of institutions and organizations that use FAE increases, support for the ongoing development of the tool also increases. Summary of Improvements needed in FAE in Year 3 Improved summary, site wide and page reporting interface Ability to compare and combine accessibility reports Rules related to accessibility of DHTML and AJAX applications Provide line number information when available Multi-resource reports from Firefox Accessibility Extension and other browser plug-ins for generating report on web application accessibility Microsoft Office 2007 Accessibility Add-in Accessibility tool for Microsoft Office 2007 was added to Year 2 scope of work. Microsoft Office was identified as is an important accessibility issue by IBHE Web Accessibility Consortium members. Microsoft Office continues to be a major accessibility issue for creating electronic instructional and administrative materials. The first step in improving the accessibility of Microsoft Office documents is providing feedback to the author on the accessibility of the Office document they created. With the release of Office 2007 and the associated XML format there is sustainable way to develop an Office Add-in to check and repair accessibility problems of Microsoft Office 13

14 documents. The use of XML provides a documented and stable version of the document object to be able to create and apply accessibility rules to the document. The accessible version of the documents can then be made available electronically using the native Office format, published as Adobe PDF files or converted to HTML with the accessibility information preserved in all these formats as a part of the XML document. This covers a wide spectrum of potential users of Office. The evaluation and repair tool would be linked to Office best practices to help developer learn about Office accessibility problems and for those problems that cannot be repaired through the addin instructions on how to fix the accessibility problem using the Office interface. Summary of Microsoft Office 2007 Accessibility Evaluator Features Use new Office XML format for evaluation of accessibility features Prompt users for missing accessibility information like text equivalents for images and pictures Prompt users to automatically create text equivalents for non-text content when information is available, like creating a tabular data table of the numeric information for a chart. Warn users when poor accessibility practices are being used and when good accessibility practices are not being used (i.e. templates in PowerPoiint and heading styles in Word documents). Coordination of Accessibility Efforts The IBHE web accessibility consortium meets for biweekly teleconferences and twice a year holds a face-to-face meeting to coordinate and plan web accessibility efforts. Dr. Gunderson chairs these meetings and prepares an agenda based on the goals of the consortium: creating human resources that understand and can implement web accessibility requirements, improving the accessibility of 3 rd party software purchased by higher education and develop tools to make it easier to evaluate and create functionally accessible web resources. The face-to-face meetings are held at various locations in the state to encourage participation from institutions from around the state. The last face-to-face meeting was held at the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign in January 2008 and the next is being planned for Fall Partner Institutions, Dissemination and Replication Partner institutions benefit from the availability and use of training resources, from the improved leverage of consortia in promoting the incorporation of accessibility features in educational technologies, and by through access to free tools to support their web accessibility efforts. Tools are a critical element in helping people to easily evaluate web resources for functional accessibility features and in providing web developers, instructors and staff with tools to easily create accessible materials. Support from IBHE to develop the tools outlined in this proposal will make it easier for these institutions to improve the accessibility of their web resources, and to collaborate on making purchased web resources more accessible. The training and tools will be available to ALL four year institutions and community colleges in Illinois regardless of their identification as a Partner Institution. Evaluation Plan The evaluation plan for this project is designed to answer the question, Does the functional accessibility of administrative and instructional web resources of participating institutions improve over time as a result of the training resources, development of product consortiums and access to the functional web accessibility evaluation tools? The Functional Accessibility Evaluator [5] will be used to measure and compare the improvements in accessibility each year of the project for participating institutions. Additional evaluations will be made of workshops offered through the consortium. Measurements will be made on the use of FAE to determine the extent to which these tools are used by higher educational institutions in Illinois. FAE will have feedback forms to allow users to report bugs or new features that would be beneficial. Focus groups will also be used to gather information on features and usability of the FAE. All of the resources developed by the IBHE Web Accessibility Consortium will be freely available to the public and available through the icita and IBHE Web Accessibility Awareness web site. The resources and activities of the consortium will be presented and exhibited at national conferences like the CSUN Technology and Person with Disabilities Conference in Los Angeles, CA or the Accessing Higher Ground Conference in Boulder, Colorado on Assistive Technology in Higher Education. 14

15 External Evaluators Professor Joe Wheaton and Ken Petri of The Ohio State University will continue to be external reviewers for the project. They are the Faculty Coordinator and Director respectively of the OSU Web Accessibility Center [13], a leading center on web accessibility in higher education. They have been attending biweekly coordination teleconferences and they will also submit an independent report to IBHE at the end of each year on their view of the consortiums activities. Benefits to People with Disabilities The use of the accessible design techniques will benefit all users, including people with disabilities. All people will have more options to be able to access web resources from a wider range of technologies, including the technologies used by students, faculty and staff with disabilities. Web resources designed with accessible design techniques will also last longer and will be easier to maintain, thereby actually helping to reduce the overall cost of web development and maintenance. References [1] Section 508 Information Technology Access Standards [2] Public Institutions Web Accessibility: Evaluation, Plans for Improvement, and Annual Reporting [3] W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines [4] Illinois Information Technology Accessibility Act Web Standards [5] Functional Accessibility Evaluator (FAE) web accessibility evaluation tool [6] icita HTML Accessibility Best Practices [7] State Wide Workshops on Web Accessibility [8] Blackboard Accessibility Interest Group [9] CARLI Accessibility Interest Group [10] EBSCO Accessibility Interest Group [11] Web Mail Accessibility Interest Group [12] Firefox Accessibility Extension [13] The Ohio State University Web Accessibility Center 15

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17 FY2009 Innovation Grants: HECA ATTACHMENT 4 OBJECTIVES AND ACTIVITIES WORKSHEET GOAL: DEVELOP INSTITUTION LEVEL EXPERTISE IN ACCESSIBLE WEB DESIGN FOR LOCAL TRAINING AND ADVOCACY OF ACCESSIBILITY (TRAIN THE TRAINER) OBJECTIVE # 1 17

18 ACTIVITIES RELATED TO PRIORITY GOALS IMPLEMENTATION DATES NUMBER OF PERSONS SERVED MEASURABLE INDICATOR OF EXPECTED RESULTS (OUTCOMES) HECA GRANT BUDGET AMOUNT OTHER FUND SOURCES Development of On-Line Web Accessibility Training Materials 1. Functional Accessibility Evaluation 2. Accessible Web Design 3. Microsoft Office Accessibility 4. Adobe PDF Accessibility 5. Web 2.0 and ARIA Accessibility 12/ /2009 Unlimited number of IT Professionals, Purchasing Agents, Instructors and Staff can use and contribute to these resources Number of workshops and courses taught using the materials Comments from users Number of self identified instructors using the resources Evaluations of workshops and courses using the materials $25, Adobe Flash Accessibility 7. Accessible Purchasing IBHE Web Accessibility Awareness Web Site 3/ /2009 Unlimited number of IT Professionals, Instructors and Staff per year Number of server requests for the materials on the web site Number and substance of comments from users $30,965 Integration of IITAA requirements and icita Best Practices into mainsteam instructional materials 5/ /2009 Unlimited number of IT Professionals, Instructors and Staff per year Number of books and training materials that integrate accessible design practices $37,625 18

19 FY2008 Innovation Grants: HECA OBJECTIVES AND ACTIVITIES WORKSHEET GOAL: IMPROVE THE ACCESSIBILITY OF PURCHASED WEB APPLICATIONS AND RESOURCES OBJECTIVE # 2 ACTIVITIES RELATED TO PRIORITY GOALS IMPLEMENTATION DATES NUMBER OF PERSONS SERVED MEASURABLE INDICATOR OF EXPECTED RESULTS (OUTCOMES) HECA GRANT BUDGET AMOUNT OTHER FUND SOURCES Development and support of consortiums on Purchased Web Technologies 10/ /2009 Unlimited, the benefit of improved accessibility to people with disabilities is unbounded Improvements in accessibility of at least 3 purchased web resources used in Illinois higher education Improvement will be measured through FAE reports $15,465 Workshops for Purchasing Agents on how to efficiently validate accessibility claims of companies 11/ / purchasing agents from across the state Training evaluations Number of institutions including IITAA purchasing policies $10,763 Improve rules and features to the Functional Accessibility Evaluator (FAE) and Firefox Accessibility Extension to analyze and report on the accessibility of web applications 10/ /2009 Unlimited, web based tools can be used by anyone at any time and the benefit of improved accessibility to people with disabilities is unbounded Number of institutions using FAE Number of registered users from state institutions of higher education Number of reports generated by users from state institutions $83,279 19