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2022 Accessibility Year in Review

A few of the MN Office of Accessibility 2022 activities and accomplishments

12/19/2022 1:55:30 PM

Wooden building blocks:

By Jay Wyant, Chief Information Accessibility Officer

Working from home has gotten comfortable. Our dog waits for me to sit at the kitchen table with my coffee so he can lay at my feet while I work. The downside is the lack of casual conversation. The sort where one person says to another:

“So, another December, another year. What did you do this year?”

“Whew! It was really, really busy! So good of you to ask! How about we sit down for a cup of coffee and I can tell you all about it?”

So grab your beverage and let’s take a quick look back.

WCAG 2.1

3 years after WCAG 2.1 became official, we assembled a team of experts from different agencies with a variety of skills and backgrounds to see if the state should add these criteria to the State Accessibility Standard. The standard derives its authority from 2009 state law that required it comprise, at a minimum:

  • Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0
  • Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, as amended in 1998.

The law also made provisions for adding revisions and updates. 

In 2022, the team members carved out spare time over 6 months to dive into the nuances of each criteria to understand:

  • How did the criteria support end users?
  • What might technology and content creators have to do differently?

While team members all agreed that WCAG 2.1 is a good thing, there is concern about the ability of our tools to support the criteria. Ultimately, the team unanimously agreed to:

  • Support adding it to the state standard. 
  • Seek feedback about tools and processes to enable conformance.

To get buy-in from IT and agency leaders, the team planned three presentation and feedback sessions open to all state employees:

  • General Introduction to WCAG 2.1, for all audiences.
  • WCAG 2.1: Deep Dive, for project managers, product owners, and technology creators such as web and app developers and document remediators, and anyone working on a mobile app.
  • A Case Study, for all audiences.

The team contracted with WebAIM for the first two presentations. CapTech, a consulting company, volunteered to present their experiences for the case study.

After each session, attendees responded to a survey that asked, among other questions, 

  • Should the State plan to adopt 2.1 as part of its state accessibility standard?
  • How much time do you need to prepare?
  • Which WCAG 2.1 success criteria would you like more training or guidance on?

The first two surveys had over a 30% response rate. We’re still reviewing the data but overall it is extremely positive. We’ll post an update once we know our next steps.

Procurement for Accessibility

Accessibility Master Contract

The folks at the state who manage procurement – how we buy services and technology – work hard to make it as easy as possible for both buyers and sellers. Two ways they do this are through master contracts and pre-registering vendors.

A master contract for captioning, audio description, and accessible documents expired last year. This year, we worked with the Department of Administration to:

  • Draft a Request for Proposal (RFP) for potential vendors.
  • Review and score vendor proposals.
  • Set a cutoff for final vendor selection.

The new Accessibility Master Contract went live late this summer and will be in force for five years.

Vendor pre-registration

Vendors who evaluate websites for accessibility and related services can apply to be on the MNSITE program. This enables state agencies to hire vendors quickly and more efficiently than through an extensive RFP process. 

Like the Accessibility master contract, this program renewed in the fall of 2022. This required all vendors to re-register. We are continuously encouraging qualified vendors to register and be available for state contracts.

Onboarding for Digital Accessibility Coordinators

Digital Accessibility Coordinators (DACs) are the backbone of the State of Minnesota’s accessibility efforts. They: 

  • Staff all of the projects we’ve talked about on this page.
  • Lead the accessibility work with their agencies and business partners.
  • Provide training and support.
  • Help out other coordinators.
  • Promote accessibility everywhere!

Some coordinators have been with us for ten years, while others are just getting started. To help everyone, a team of new and experienced coordinators put together an onboarding packet. This packet includes:

  • General expectations of individual coordinators as well as DACs as a team.
  • Information for their supervisors.
  • Best practices and resources for testing, procurement, and other activities.
  • Links to training and other information.

Training and Testing for Major Systems

The Office of Accessibility’s small staff size means that our time is best suited to providing consultations to project teams, and training, and guidance for all state staff . But there are times when projects are so large and critical that we have to be directly involved.

One example is our help desk software. Jennie Delisi, our Accessibility Analyst has worked closely with the implementation team to:

  • Design accessible templates. The goal is to ensure that all user  interfaces are accessible. This requires understanding the features and limitations of the technology’s templating system. Jennie worked with the team to devise and test processes to ensure accessible output.
  • Create accessibility test plans. The system has multiple interfaces. Each needs functional and accessibility testing. Jennie led accessibility testing, and followed up with the vendor to ensure they addressed known accessibility issues in upgrades. 

Another example   is a system or technology solution that integrates with many others. Jennie worked with a team implementing a solution that classifies and protects data. This impacts many different tools used at the state of Minnesota. This could include: 

  • Email.
  • Documents.
  • Systems that generate emails and documents. 

The team brought Jennie onto the project early because of the project’s complexity. She:

  • Provided preliminary feedback about accessibility issues with the administrative interfaces. Jennie shared this feedback with the vendor, and followed up with them to track progress on the improvements.
  • Worked with the Quality Assurance (QA) professional from the team. Together they identified when to include digital accessibility testing in the project plan. Jennie led the accessibility portions of the test plan. 
  • Incorporated people with disabilities who use assistive technology into the pilot groups. Jennie worked with the QA, business analyst, and project manager to plan how the project team would: 
    • Communicate inclusively about the pilot opportunity.
    • Ensure they could address specific needs for the testers.
    • Have accessible feedback opportunities. 

Education and Awareness 

The State of Minnesota has over 35,000 state employees spread over 70 agencies, boards, and commissions. We’re always looking for ways to promote digital accessibility and get them involved. Our activities this year included the following efforts. 

Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD)

We celebrate GAAD every year. The continuation of remote work among many state employees meant we had to be creative to encourage participation. We organized six separate events throughout the day, each on a different topic. All of them tied to the current exploration of WCAG 2.1 that we mentioned earlier.

Rachael Bradley-Montgomery, Co-chair of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Accessibility Guidelines Working Group, began the celebration with a wonderful keynote. She explained why and how accessibility guidelines change and evolve. Then five sets of presenters and guests followed up with impactful discussions and personal stories of digital accessibility’s value in:

  • End user impact of accessibility standards.
  • Buying accessible technology.
  • Projects that shift left for accessibility.
  • Creating accessible visual content.
  • Web application accessibility.

You can watch all 6 sessions yourself!

Accessible PDF Training

We have a lot of accessible PDF experts here at the state. At the same time, more employees need to learn how to make accessible PDFs, particularly those who work for smaller agencies and boards. Some of our experts got together and created this wonderful “PDF 101” about all the basics of creating PDFs that meet our high standards.

They chunked the information into 11 short, easily digestible modules. You can start at the beginning or just pick the topic you need to know now.

Even better: its free and open to the public, so you can share this with your colleagues.

Experience Lab

In the past, our office collaborated with Digital Accessibility Coordinators to create an “experience lab.” We first offered the lab at the MN Government IT Symposium. Then again at a celebration of the 10th anniversary of the Accessibility Standard. This year, we reconvened team members to create a virtual version that we provided in person at the 2022 IT Symposium.  

We designed the Experience Lab to give individuals a flavor of how people with disabilities experience digital technology. The goal is to encourage people to stop and think about how their work can impact others. Then encourage them to learn more about what they can do to make technology and digital information more accessible and usable.

508 Guidance

Most digital accessibility conversations are about how to conform with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). There is relatively little information on accessible hardware or software outside of WCAG criteria.  We convened a group of Digital Accessibility Coordinators who are passionate about the topic and did a “deep dive” into the non-WCAG portions of Section 508.

This resulted in a guidance document (Word) that provides a starting point for state employees who either:

  • Create software.
  • Work with vendors on software or hardware.  

It also attempts to clarify how to use 508’s Functional Performance Criteria (FPC) section.

A related goal is to clarify state expectations regarding hardware systems such as multifunction printers. It provides vendors with guidance on how to demonstrate their technology’s support for accessibility.

The coordinators who drafted this document spent countless hours diving into the details of the rule’s text. The goal was to set clear expectations for state staff and vendors. This document provides state employees with a solid resource when making decisions about buying or updating software or hardware.

 

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