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From: Giovanni Duarte
Date: Fri, Apr 15 2011 6:45AM
Subject: How to create a web accessibility and ADA compliance department for a Higher Ed institution?
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Hi,

My institution is trying to create an "office or department" that will deal
with web accessibility and ADA compliance. We already have an office that
deals with ADA students but this new department will need to ensure that:
Technologies across our institutions are accessible, audit and resolve
issues on web sites and technologies owned by the institution, and provide a
comprehensive support for any web accessibility needs and challenges
presented to the institution.
What I am trying to figure out is what type of skills, education, and
experience should we look for? Do you have any examples of what this type of
office looks like? What about the job titles? How many people should be part
of such department? What should we consider to make sure the implementation
is successful?

Thanks,
Giovanni.

From: Michael.Moore
Date: Fri, Apr 15 2011 9:06AM
Subject: Re: How to create a web accessibility and ADA compliance department for a Higher Ed institution?
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Giovanni,

I am part of a department that sounds very similar to what you would like to set up. The DARS EIR (Electronic Information Resources) Accessibility team consists of an Accessibility Coordinator and four Accessibility Specialists. We report to a manager in a department that is independent of Information Resources (IR) and Communications who are responsible for technical infrastructure and web content. Our role is to provide training, technical assistance, testing, and some remediation for Electronic Information Resources that are developed or procured for all Texas HHS agencies. We work with the IR departments, procurement, communications, and the four other HHS Agency Accessibility coordinators.

The team members have expertise in web design and development, most of us have been web and/or application developers at some point, and have expertise in accessibility for all types of web content and electronic documents and forms. We support developers who are working with dotNet, Flex, webSphere, SharePoint, and using a variety of code libraries including JQuery and Dojo. Everyone on the team is a proficient JAWS user and most of us are also competent users of other screen readers, Dragon Naturally Speaking, and ZoomText. We were involved in the development of the HHS Accessibility Policy and are required to be section 508 and 255 experts. Electronic document support primarily involves MS Office and PDF documents we also support accessibility for content created through things like Lectora, Captivate, Flash etc or whatever else someone may find to create content. In addition to the software and content support we perform compliance testing and VPAT and accessibility docum
entation reviews to support hardware procurement as well. This has included all types of office hardware from phone systems to fax machines and document centers, and PCs.

Because we never know how the content is generated we look for folks that have strong technical skills and a demonstrated ability to learn new platforms on their own. All of us required additional intensive JAWS training after we were hired. Most of our educational backgrounds are in information technology or computer science. (Bachelors and Masters degrees). Some of us had experience as professional educators, and I was an equipment engineer in a prior life. If you contact me off list I can send you job descriptions for the accessibility specialist and accessibility coordinator positions.


Mike Moore
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From: Bevi Chagnon | PubCom
Date: Fri, Apr 15 2011 10:15AM
Subject: Re: How to create a web accessibility and ADA compliance department for a Higher Ed institution?
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My first thoughts...

Testing and reviewing media files is extremely time-consuming so as you
determine the number of people and skills required to get the job done,
allow for adequate time to do the work. It's always longer than we think!

Automation of this process is tough: so many checkpoints and standards must
be tested by a human being rather than computer software.

And then there's the education time: getting back to those who create files
that fail, explaining what needs to be remediated, and often hand-holding
them through the process.

Also define whether the office will check only website files at this time,
or will it be tasked with reviewing all files, including Word, PDFs, Excel,
PowerPoint, and all the other files used by your institution.

— Bevi Chagnon
___________________
Bevi Chagnon / PubCom
Government publishing specialists, trainers, consultants
Print, press, web, Acrobat PDF and 508
April-May Classes: www.pubcom.com/classes Section 508 Accessibility for
Word, InDesign, and Acrobat PDF

From: Giovanni Duarte
Date: Fri, Apr 15 2011 12:12PM
Subject: Re: How to create a web accessibility and ADA compliance department for a Higher Ed institution?
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Bevi,
Those are very good points. Do you happen to know how those departments or
offices are usually called? Do you have any type of job description that
could help?
Thanks,
Giovanni.

From: Hoffman, Allen
Date: Mon, Apr 18 2011 8:06AM
Subject: Re: How to create a web accessibility andADA compliance department for a Higher Ed institution?
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I'd suggest that for creation of an office for higher Ed setting that
you focus on:
1. Setting organization policy;
2. Develop training plan to educate appropriate stakeholder about their
assigned responsibilities per policy, and the available resources;
3. Metrics, develop a metrics system to determine effectiveness of
training and delivery of accessible material
4. Help, develop a needs list of resources for materials authors/users,
and then build plans to fill the needs


I understand that this is very high level, but the chances that a person
can do the work of the organization as it relates to remediation of all
materials to be presented to students just isn't playing with reality.
You need to educate gatekeepers about materials expectations, authors
about the same, and then develop eresources to get them to be able to do
the work.

From: Giovanni Duarte
Date: Mon, Apr 18 2011 10:27AM
Subject: Re: How to create a web accessibility andADA compliance department for a Higher Ed institution?
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Allen,
You bring an important point - policies. I agree that those are very
important but I am not sure how to start creating those. What is the
difference between those internal policies and following section 508? Isn't
section 508 all the policies I need? Are the different levels (A,AA,AAA) of
section 508 the type of policies I need to defined?

I also agree that educating the stakeholders is more feasible than trying to
fix problems but I still need experts in the team who know how to approach
the different technologies and systems.

Thanks,
Giovanni.

From: Hoffman, Allen
Date: Mon, Apr 18 2011 1:54PM
Subject: Re: How to create a webaccessibility andADA compliance department for a Higher Edinstitution?
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Policies drive activities.
You need to develop policies to help in the start up of getting
cooperation.
You should include procedures also, e.g. who authorizes content, or
where students can go to request remediation of content, or etc...

Think about the various procedural things that might need to be
addressed, and build those in to policies also.
Think about authority, accountability, and responsibilities. For
example, who is responsible for ensuring videos are captioned, documents
are tagged if in PDF, and who provides the tools to do all this nifty
work.


If there are gatekeepers of content, define their role in reviewing
content for accessibility, and what their authority and responsibility
is. What accountability do site woners have for content?

I hope this helps.