NYS Forum IT Accessibility Committee Meeting

April 9, 2009, 2:30-4:00 p.m.
Forum Offices, 24 Aviation Road, Colonie

Attendees: Kristen Albright (Parole), Estelle Council (Parole), Laura Edlund (AT&T), Kathy Farrell (SUNY-ESC), Kim Fraim (DOH), Mike Hritcko (NYSIF), Rudy Nugent (OMH), Dee McCumber (DOH), Joel Obuchowski (SID), Debi Orton (GOER), Lizette Rivera (OPDV), Lisa Rosano (CQCAPD), Mike Short (DCS)

We went around the table to introduce attendees.

Old Business:

  1. Agency Consulting - Debi and Mike worked with OFT on the resurrection of the online validation tool; Debi worked with OCFS on a webmaster training program. SUNY had a few training questions. DMV and OPTV inquired about website captions and GOER made some inquires regarding a program called Nice Balance.
  2. Validation Tool: OFT has approval to fund the Hi Software Validation Tool for the remainder of this calendar year. At present, it is available to previous users at the former URL: http://nysf.hisoftware.com. More information to follow by Marilyn Cordell.

New Business:

  1. Upcoming Presentations:
    "Accessibility for Executives" will be held on April 23rd from 9:00AM until 12:00 PM Dee McCumber from Health and Jeff Bennett from OFT will present.. We discussed the different disabilities we wanted to feature in the roundtable portion of our session and agreed on the following; Visual Impairments, Hearing Impairments, Mobility Impairments, Color Blindness, Cognitive Impairments, Elderly and Aging, Digital Divide, Seizure Disorder and Usability. Debi agreed to reach out to Paul Maguire and Marilyn Cordell for their involvement in the roundtables.
  2. Other Training Progress: Here are the other programs we are planning with estimated target dates:
    1. JAWS training at the CIO/OFT Technology Academy ? May : Jon Farina attended to share areas to focus on when conducting training.
      1. Ensure clear measurement for focused training.
      2. Securing proper JAWS version 10 licenses on computers for full benefit of training.
      3. Jon recommended smaller groups and to bring training to agencies rather than centralized training when feasible.
      4. Debi agreed to write a feature letter explaining issues to maximize training event.
    2. Attorney General Briefing on Web Accessibility Requirements ? May
      Dee has some contacts at the AG?s office and will get contact information for Debi.
    3. Search Engine Optimization and Accessibility ? October
      Kathy Farrell and Lizette Rivera will work on an outline for a session that exposes some of the hidden benefit of using semantically correct, syntactically correct markup.
    4. Writing for the Web ? November
      Kathy Farrell, Lizette Rivera, and Debi will work on an outline for this session, covering reading levels, clear language, how users read on the web, and how to optimize content for the medium.
    5. Basic Web Development Skills at the CIO/OFT Technology Academy ? CIO/OFT was interested in offering a "web basics" class. Debi promised to follow up with Marilyn, who was unable to attend.
  3. Adopting Section 508: OFT has recommended we consider the adoption of the Federal section 508 standard. Mike and Debi acknowledged that it is not radically different than NYS?s standard today. Joel indicated he?d like to better understand the differences. Debi asked that the committee provide feedback to her and she?d help to develop more resources and tools for Section 508 integration to ensure better awareness.

Next Meeting:

May 14, 2009
2:30-4:00 p.m.
Location: Forum Offices, 24 Aviation Road, Colonie