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A few of the MN Office of Accessibility 2022 activities and accomplishments
12/19/2022 1:55:30 PM
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.
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:
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:
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:
To get buy-in from IT and agency leaders, the team planned three presentation and feedback sessions open to all state employees:
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,
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.
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:
The new Accessibility Master Contract went live late this summer and will be in force for five years.
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.
Digital Accessibility Coordinators (DACs) are the backbone of the State of Minnesota’s accessibility efforts. They:
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:
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:
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:
The team brought Jennie onto the project early because of the project’s complexity. She:
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.
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:
You can watch all 6 sessions yourself!
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.
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.
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:
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.
Would you like to learn more about the accessibility work being done by Minnesota IT Services and the State of Minnesota? Once a month we will bring you more tips, articles, and ways to learn more about digital accessibility.
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