April 17, 2018 9am-3pm - Center for British and Irish Studies (British Studies Room) - Norlin Library

The event was a great success - we will definitely be doing this again. For now, you can read the event summary (Microsoft Word document downloadable from Google Drive) and look for individual presentation materials linked in the program below.

Program

  • 8:30 Doors open

    • Coffee, tea, orange juice and water served starting at 8:45am
  • 9:00 - 9:30: State of the accessibility efforts at CU Boulder: People, resources, processes

    • Google Slides presentation

    • Dan Jones, Pramila Patel, Kosta Tovstiadi

  • 9:40 - 10:20: Canvas for learning support

    • Google Slides presentation
    • Laura Hamrick, CU Boulder
    • The adoption of Canvas as CU Boulder's new learning management system included extensive accessibility evaluation. This session will cover what we know about Canvas's accessibility and address how to promote greater content and platform accessibility within Canvas. We will break into groups to discuss lessons learned and related accessibility challenges that you face in your role on campus.
  • 10:30 - 11:10: Allied for A11y: The Campus, System, Vendor Partnership

    • Microsoft PowerPoint presentation
    • Art Figel, Brad Baker and Chris Toomer, UIS
    • University Information Systems (UIS) delivers CU enterprise-wide services to students, faculty and employees. Much effort is allocated to facets like Quality, Compatibility and Stability, with a renewed focus on Navigability, Usability, and Accessibility. UIS employs a hybrid model to ensure all these facets are considered in any service delivered to our end users.  The hybrid model employs expertise within UIS, expertise on the campuses, and expertise from our vendor-partners. This session will review the UIS hybrid model through case studies in enterprise-wide service delivery.
  • 11:20 - 12:00: Making Accessible Websites with Web Express

    • Google Slides presentation
    • Kevin Crafts / Jesus Ortiz - Strategic Relations
    • The presentation will give an overview web accessibility and it’s importance in higher education. We’ll go over some common user content accessibility problems in web express, and how to resolve them. We will also give an introduction to automated accessibility testing tools and how they can highlight opportunities to improve accessibility, as well as their limitations. For the second half of the workshop attendees will be able to ask questions relating to best practices in express.
  • 12:00 - 1:00: Lunch

    • Soft taco bar (shredded chicken, vegetarian fajitas, refried beans, rice and dessert) provided by UMC Catering
  • 1:00 - 1:50: Beyond Screen Readers: Insights into the blind experience from the AUL research team.

    • Materials coming soon
    • Kevin Darcy - AUL
    • In this session, we switch gears to highlight the experiences of low vision/blind students at CU with a presentation of our initial research findings.  We will discuss the inspiration for the research, describe our research methods, and discuss broad themes that are emerging from the research.  We will conclude this session by exploring, with audience participation, strategies to guide future policy around diversity and inclusion
  • 2:00 - 2:50: Roundtable: Definitions and boundaries of accessibility

    • PDF containing presentation slides and summary notes
    • Mike Williamson, Amelia Dickerson, and Kevin Darcy - AUL
    • Before moving ahead on a project, it is usually valuable to identify exactly what you are trying to do. By the time we get to this last session of the day, we will have looked at accessibility—resources, processes, results, etc. - but we will not have explicitly articulated what we mean by “accessibility” in terms of the work we do. In this session, we will disrupt static definitions of “accessibility” and explore the strengths and weaknesses of some of those definitions. In this interactive workshop, we hope to broaden how campus groups approach making the campus “accessible”.

About the event

The workshop was designed for all web content creators at CU Boulder and all over the CU System and our campuses - a chance to come learn about available digital accessibility resources, learn new skills, meet new people, and participate in policy and strategy related discussions.

The workshop was organized by the Office of Information Technology with support from the Chancellor's Accessibility Committee, Office of Strategic Relations, University Libraries, Office of Undergraduate Education, and the Office of the Vice President for Employee and Information Services. For all questions concerning the event, please contact the organizers at aul@colorado.edu.