MONICA OLSSON: Right. I'm recording. Shall we go ahead and get started, it's 11 on the dot. 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Sounds good. 

MONICA OLSSON: OK. All right. Good morning, again, everyone. This is Monica Olsson from the State Board, Policy Associate for Accessibility. Welcome to November edition of accessibility ctcLink open forum. Before I hand it over to my colleague, Chris Soran, to get us started with our agenda, we always cover a few housekeeping items at the beginning of our forum here. 

We do have a professional live captioner providing services for us today. So if you would like to benefit from that, you can hover over the-- or select with your keyboard, the three ellipses that appears above the word More and select Show Transcript. And that should get your live transcript going for you as well. 

We do record our open forum sessions and get those posted with the captions on the videos as soon as possible to our ctcLink Accessibility web page. This is a conversation between the State Board and all the colleges around the status of ctcLink accessibility, the projects we are working on. So please feel free to ask questions or add comments. 

You are welcome to use the Raise Hand feature, if that works for you. You can unmute yourself and interject into the conversation, if that's more accessible for you. You can also place a comment or question into the chat box and Chris and myself as well as other State Board folks will do our best to moderate the chat and make sure we don't miss anything. I believe that's everything I need to cover from a housekeeping perspective. So I won't keep this anymore. And Chris, I'll hand it over to you. 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Good morning, everybody. I'm Christopher Soran, the application support manager here at the State Board. So I'll go ahead and roll into the slides. Good morning. Thanks for coming. There's our agenda for today. 

I'll cover a few stuff around HCX, what we got going on with our open Oracle service requests. And then I'll, kind of, touch on the vendor and update cycles and how that impacts the speed in which we can get accessibility fixes between the different products. And I'll talk about how we can differentiate that. No. Go ahead, Monica. 

MONICA OLSSON: Sure. Thanks, Chris. So this is Monica again. So there's just some general updates that we want to make sure we share with everyone on the call today. At our last open forum, I introduced Vicki Walton to you. They are also on the call here, on the video here as well. So Vicki Walton is our new full time web accessibility specialist and accessibility tester who is on my team and their first date was October 5th. 

I know that Chris is going to talk a little bit more about HCX mobile and processes related to updating to the new version, et cetera. However, I do want to share that one of the first projects that he worked on was to perform some accessibility conformance testing for HCX mobile version 22.2.0 which is the version that we're now on. Vicki looked at that using a NVDA screen reader and as well as some keyboard owning navigation, wrote up a nice report with the results of what issues we were finding that still exist. 

And we shared that with our colleagues here at State Board, with Chris' team, et cetera. And now I think, Chris, I'll hand it back over to you so you can talk a little bit more about what's going on with HCX updates and your work with DSSC. 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Yeah. So last week, I had the privilege of going grant to the DSSC meeting and presenting on ctcLink updates and that was great. So thanks for anyone that was there attending that. One of the slides will be a repeat. I thought I'd bring it here in case anybody wasn't there last week. 

And then also around HCX. So HCX 22.2. So we deployed that on October 15 in our production. So everybody has access to that. And while we're in the middle of the 22.2 update, HighPoint released 22.3 and just over the weekend, they release 22.4. And so we've started-- we're starting to review the installation of 22.4 to get that in. Let me get people admitted. All right. There we go. 

And so we're going to be looking at a follow up with the next latest version of HighPoint. And I'm going to go over some of the release notes that they have for what's coming for the accessibility fixes in some upcoming slides. And so I'll head into that next slide. Oh, yes. So there's-- Oh, go ahead, Monica. [INAUDIBLE] 

MONICA OLSSON: Do you want to stay-- do you want to actually finish our thoughts on mobile before we talk about Okta? 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Yeah. I'll go back to this. So in HCX 22.3, these are the accessibility fixes coming, they're listed in their release notes. So there's enhancements on account activity, for browsing classes, for the class roster, and of course, catalog, of course history, viewing the list of courses and section degrees, on my loans page, requesting a transcript, transfer credits, enhancements for viewing the 1098-T. So there's a whole list of things coming. 

I'll post a little bit more about it because they didn't have the release notes until Sunday night for the 22.4 accessibility updates. So a lot of updates around error messages and how they're displayed and how you interact with them. So that'll be the 22.4. So there's a whole bit of stuff coming in these next updates. And one of the things with HCX, they prefer that we submit our issues and they want to support us on the latest version. So they want us to get under the latest version before we start submitting issues because we may be submitting issues on stuff they already fixed and resolved. 

Like this list of stuff is some of the things that we had, at least some of these are things we had concerns about with 22.2 and earlier versions. So that's one of the reasons we're trying to get updated onto the latest version of bringing these latest updates so we can compare that with the review Vicki did on 22.2 and see if those issues are still outstanding in the latest versions and work to get them addressed by HighPoint. 

So it's not that they won't accept tickets on stuff that we submit on 22.2, but they want us on the latest version before we start submitting tickets typically. So I'll kind of cover it here in this next slide. So in 22.2, one of the things that Josh noted was an issue was on the-- in new credit ticket. And they just accepted it last week. And it just shifted from accepted to work in progress. 

So we suggested moving the Submit button as well as-- because once it's activated, it's grayed out. It's in the wrong position anyways. It's unlike the Add Classes or Edit Widgets page. 

JOSH: If you'd like, this is Josh from SBCTC, I can break down that bug a little bit better. Well, not better, you'll say it just fine. But I have a little bit more familiarity with it. So I'll just go over it. So on the page right now, we have a screenshot of the dashboards. So one of the features in HCX is the ability to change what widgets or what items you're able to see on your home page or your dashboard like the shopping cart or inbox and et cetera. 

And you have the ability to customize that display to add or take away some of those items. So when you first go into the page to edit your widgets, there is a Submit button or Save Changes button that is at the top of the page that is deactivated. The only way that the button becomes active is if a selection is made on the page, or if a checkbox is deactivated or unchecked. And then the Save Changes comes into view and the user is able to click that button. 

This poses a challenge for users that use screen readers because they're not aware that the button is available to them because they've tapped past it. So we submitted this to HighPoint and they accepted it just recently as a problem. And we've suggested a few different ways of fixing it, one of them being not to deactivate the button. The others to move the button at the bottom of the page and at the bottom of the tab order. 

So we'll see what they come back with as their way to fix it. This is not just on the Edit My Widgets page, but also when a student is going to add or drop classes and other pages where there are checkboxes and selections to be made. So we're hoping to see this change come through, we'd expect our earliest it to be 22.5. So I think that's about it. 

VICKI WALTON: Josh, can I just say something. This is Vicki from SBCTC. This is good practice anyway for keyboard use because you're going through the right keyboard order. So in my testing, I found a lot of this as being problematic in the way that they structured buttons on top of things that you have that are below it. So it's very problematic even for keyboard users. 

JOSH: Absolutely. Absolutely. And so yeah, every place I seen it, I brought it to their attention and said this needs to be changed everywhere that it occurs. So not just on the Edit My Widgets or drop classes, but wherever they're doing this development style, it needs to be changed. 

MONICA OLSSON: This is Monica from the State Board. Josh, thank you for explaining that button accessibility issue a little bit more in detail. And Vicki, thanks for adding your comments around keyboard accessibility that the testing results that you found. Before, Chris, I know I'm going to hand it back to you just a minute, I saw a really great question from Beth at Bates in the chat. Beth says, are you able to load these fixes or updates or releases for mobile into a test environment before they go into production? 

It's a great question. And the answer is yes. And there's an existing process for that that does happen. Now one of our tasks at hand is since Vicky's role is brand new at the agency, we're going to be working closely with Chris' team and also another person named Tammy Whitney who's an associate director for testing at the State Board to really, kind of, work out how we can fold in Vicky's accessibility conformance testing alongside the existing functional testing that's happening in these test environments before updates are released into production. So I wanted to address that question in the chat. And Chris, if you had additional thoughts or information you wanted to share in answer to that question, feel free. 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Yeah. Thanks for sharing that. I'm very excited to have Vicki as part of this process as we look to improve every time we go through. Definitely, we'll be looking to get a test in before it gets released, check it out. Take it, submit it, and it's-- we want to fix everything. 

MONICA OLSSON: Beth, did that answer your question or did you have-- there's another message in the chat. Oh, just from Vicki, OK. I think we're going to probably keep moving on. 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: All right. So did you want to go back to the Okta piece? 

MONICA OLSSON: Yes. 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: All right. All right. Go ahead. 

MONICA OLSSON: Cool. Thank you. This is Monica again from the State Board. And Vicki I might ask for a little bit of your help to explaining this project and work. But what I'll begin by saying is that Okta is an MFA or multi authentication factor product that is used in our system, and they went through, they received some accessibility testing support about a year ago from CATO, which stands for Committee of Accessible Technology Oversight in our governance structure. 

And their team has redesigned the Okta sign-in widget to improve its accessibility for keyboard only and folks using screen readers or other assistive technology. Right now they're in basically a beta-testing period for that redesign which is slated to be released into production in winter, I think February is when the project manager said they're hoping to release this update. 

So Vicki and I have met with the product manager at Okta for the sign-in signing widget. We've entered into the beta-testing period. Vicki has looked at their redesign with several different MFA combinations using NVDA screen reader and voiceover and keyboard only, documented those accessibility results. We are in the process of sharing them directly back to Okta right now with also the goal of having a conversation too with IT leadership here at the State Board so they understand the accessibility improvements and what still needs to be done or decided. So Vicki, did you want to say anything about your testing or have I missed anything from your perspective around that? 

VICKI WALTON: Yeah. Well they had me do a sign-in, a sign-up, a locked account and a password reset. And all of those scenarios using a keyboard only and then also NVDA. And for the most part, they did a pretty good job with accessibility with the exception of voiceover, as you see on the screen, where when it got to the mobile app of the Okta verify, the voiceover would not read anything in that app. 

After we had a conversation with our the product manager, though she turned on another feature, and now that particular voiceover is not needed. It's now a push notification. So once you click a button, it will push it to your mobile app and do it on its own. So that was encouraging. But it's accessible. I can say that. There are some other issues that we ran into that, but they are more product processing through those scenarios than they are accessibility. 

So we've mentioned those to the product manager and just like Monica said, we need to make sure that IT knows which multi-factor authentication to turn on that are best suited for a bigger audience of people that might need to use assistive technology and not ones like biometric where your options are only a couple. And most of us don't have a fingerprint thing. So those would be useless to be activated. So we're fine tuning that report and we'll send it off as well. 

MONICA OLSSON: We also-- thank you for that. We also were told by Okta that there's a few schools in our system that are participating in this testing period as well. And that they have some of their own accessible staff going through the testing steps as outlined by Okta before this period closes on November 14. And I think that's really wonderful. 

We don't know who those groups of people are at this point, but we're happy that we are able to join in and participate as well. Lastly, I have one more update on this slide that I'd like to take a minute to announce before we move on. I'm thrilled to share that Vicki and I, we are working alongside CATO, Committee for Accessible Technology Oversight to provide a program called the WA Learning Lab or the Web Accessibility Learning Lab. 

And this is a 10-week intensive training program that's going to start in February and end in April. We have a partner signed on, WebAIM, they're an internationally recognized leader in web accessibility that's going to be providing some live technical training to participants. And we're just really thrilled to be able to offer this program. 

I'm going to put a couple of links in the chat for those of you who are interested in learning more. The first link will just be the program description, so you can understand a little bit more about the program, learning outcomes, the intended audience. This is a cohort or team-based learning opportunity. So that's an important thing to know. And it is open to all 34 colleges and also teams at the state board to apply. 

And the other thing to note is that we have an info session coming up this week, Thursday the 10th at 1:00 to 2:00 PM that you can sign up for. So I'll put the link to sign up for the info session in the chat as well. And I think that's it for me now, Chris. Thanks. 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Sounds great. Thanks. So the W-2 PDF. So when you go to view your W-2 information, when you go to your taxes, the HTML version of the page is fully accessible. But the downloaded PDF version is not correctly tagged. And there's been a variety of challenges Oracle has had to face on this one. And they were hoping to have it out by the end of this year so we could all have it for next year's taxes, but it's looking like it's going to be another year out for you to have that available for next year's taxes. 

So I will continue to update as I get updates from them. And we can get that all results in. So we continue going to the HTML version to get the info. 

So the different vendors have different update cycles. And this kind of impacts how quickly we're able to implement different accessibility fixes or fixes at all from any of these vendors. So there's a whole bunch of acronyms in here and I'll explain all that. 

So from Oracle, so if we're submitting a service request to Oracle saying this button here's at the incorrect tab order or this PDF is not appropriately tagged or whatever we're reporting them is an issue, so we're submitting those in SRs or service requests and we're going back and forth with them. They're usually asking itself for replication steps. And all sorts of information to convince them. It's a walking violation, and then you fix it. And then accept it and start working on it. 

And then once they get the fix out, they typically make it available in the next PUM or image or not a JPEG. The PeopleSoft Update Managers is what PUM stands for. So when we go to just, for example, recently on October 15, we implemented the Campus Solutions 26 image into production. And we'll be implementing Campus Solutions in 27 in our production in December. And so the bug fixes, all bug fixes, accessibility and otherwise, come in those update packages that we apply. 

We can also request a PeopleSoft Release Patch set or a PRP. So essentially taking, sort of, a small compartmentalized set of objects that contain all the fixes related to that accessibility issue. And then we can apply those individually in between. 

And then we get those applied to our test environment, we review, compare reports. We see if a retrofit is needed. So if there have been any previous customizations to any of those, we need to reapply the customizations alongside the Oracle changes. And then we test that and get that deployed in a production. 

There's also what's called a POC or a PeopleSoft-- I forget with the OC. Oh, so it's like a proof of concept. Yeah. POC, proof of concept. So it's a set of code they usually give it to us to say, hey, you can apply this yourself as a customization. But this may change, the final version may change by the time the next image or release comes out. And so we can apply those and get those through and test those. 

But then likely those will eventually get replaced in a further update with maybe different version. So those images that I'm talking about, the updates like Campus Solutions version 26, Campus Solutions version 27, what have you, those-- we're coming out with like four times a year. But next year starting in 2023, they're going to be coming out three times a year. And there's also PeopleTools updates that we do those about annually. 

So that's sort lot of underpinning, underlying functionality throughout the system that's used in a bunch of different places throughout Campus Solutions and Human Capital Management and finance. So the fixes may come pillar specific, be it Campus Solutions or HCM or finance, or it may be on that PeopleTools version. So where the fix is needed impacts how quickly we can get it implemented. 

Is it the tools version? Is it just in a specific pillar? Can we get the release patch set from Oracle? Can we not? Can we get a proof of concept? Can we not? So how quickly they get us those fixes, it sort of determines how quickly we can get them implemented. 

So for HCX. So we work with this company called HighPoint. It's-- 

JOSH: Hey, if I can interrupt real quick. We also forgot the custom package. So anything that we've developed custom and PeopleSoft, those are up to us. So Oracle doesn't help us out or deliver any of these things like PRP, POC, PUM. Those don't apply to anything that the State Board has custom written. So those are up to us to fix. 

But that's also the reason why if it hasn't been customized, and there isn't a strong case for the code to be customized, we don't customize the deliberate code because it could be changed with an update or one of these ad hoc updates. So we try to keep those as close to deliberate as possible. 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Thanks, Josh. Yeah, we want them to fix stuff that they should fix. Yeah, but anything we've customized, we can just update. That's the quickest route. But we try not to-- we try and make Oracle fix their own stuff. Yep. Good point. 

And so with HighPoint for all the HCX stuff, so we just recently implemented the 22.2. I talked about the 22.2 version or 22.4 version, we're looking to implement Josh said, the fix, that he had accepted they're working on is probably going to come in like 22.5 or maybe 22.6. Depends on how quickly they get that development done. 

So it's those point releases where we're able to get those accessibility fixes. So it's not like we can just implement-- just apply a patch and get the fix or customize it ourselves. So we're waiting for them to fix it. So we're getting reports on that there's an accessibility issue something, it helps us know, do we need to work with-- is this just is this a PeopleSoft thing? Do we need to work with Oracle? Is this an HCX thing and we'll work with HighPoint? So that helps us when you're letting us know there's a problem, which vendor we go to get that all fixed or resolved. 

So the Online Admissions Application Portal or OAAP where our new students go to apply, we work with Kastech to get those fixes from them. And so we don't have to wait for the next update or patch set. We can typically work with them to get that code implemented quickly after they get the fix to us, or get to fix it one for the Online Admission Application Portal or OAAP. So that's an acronym. 

So how quickly we're able to get these fixes we're sort of dictated by who we're working with, how quickly they get the fix done. And all these different update cycles that we have to work with. So I just thought I'd give I gave this pitch last week at DSSC so it's a repeat for you. But I thought I'd present it here just kind of show how we approach these, getting these stuff fixed. Yeah. We want to fix everything as quickly as possible. 

MONICA OLSSON: Chris, this is Monica. I actually really appreciate this slide. And I think it's good information for our colleges to know that there's three different vendors that we are talking about when you look at this, when we're looking at this slide, when we're talking about Oracle, PeopleSoft, or Kastech with OAAP, or HighPoint with HCX mobile and that each vendor has its own cycle, production cycle and update release schedule. 

And we don't need our colleges, we don't need you to memorize those timelines. So it's useful for you to know that we are working with three different vendors and three different timelines when we're reporting accessibility bugs and advocating and pushing for solutions from the vendor side. 

And before we move on, Chris, I just wanted to see if there's anyone out there who needs more clarification around what this slide is communicating or if we need to say any of those acronyms out loud again. I know that these words might not be in everyone's everyday vernacular. Paul says, Thanks. Cool. So I think we're good to move on. 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Sounds good. That was the last bit. So feel free to let us know if you have anything you want us to talk about in the next forum or any challenges you're facing and want to get it all fixed. You should check out our ctcLink Accessibility web page. We'll continue to post those accessibility image overview documents as we implement each new version. 

In HCM, we're working on image 44. In Campus Solutions, we're image 27. We're working on the HCX 22.4 update. We're working on the Financing HCM, we're working on PeopleTools update. 

MONICA OLSSON: It's also where we will store updated VPAT information that vendors send us so people need to look for that information. They've got that there. Chris created a useful glossary of terms since we realized that a lot of these conversations use terminology and acronyms that might be new to some people or you might need a refresher. So there's that resource as well. 

And there's several different ways to get in touch with us. We encourage everyone to keep attending these open forums. The previous slide, Chris said that there's a, kind of, an idea or topic submission form on the ctcLink Accessibility page. You can email this to reach out. There's also a ctcLink accessibility listserv or E list that several people have joined that-- it's pretty quiet so far. But that's another way to facilitate conversation. So we just want to make sure that people understand we're trying to be as available and accessible as possible to have these conversations and to receive your questions in a way that works for you. 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: And the ctcLink accessibility web page got a little bit of a redesign recently. So it's a little more compact so you're not scrolling for days. So here's the image of the documents we're talking about here. So we want to check out the latest and greatest with high point in HCX. 

The glossary of terms we're talking about there. Here's got all the stuff we're working on, all the open stuff we've got going on with Oracle. All the VPAT stuff here at the bottom. CampusCE, HighPoint, Oracle, all the good stuff. So that's all there. 

MONICA OLSSON: So are there, this is Monica speaking, are there any comments or questions from our attendees today regarding what we've presented on or anything else related to ctcLink and accessibility? 

Make sure I'm not losing anything in the chat. I'm not seeing any questions in the chat. And that's just fine. So as a reminder, we do have another open forum scheduled for December 13, it's always the second Tuesday of each month, 11:00 to noon. This next open forum in December is the last one in this series. 

So likely what that means I'll be doing, as Chris and everyone else, I'll be creating a new series which might result in a new link. And I'll post that everywhere that we need to have that posted so people will not get lost or left behind. But I'm pretty sure that December is the last one in this particular series. Kyle, says should we all wear ugly sweaters that day? Yes, please. 

[LAUGHS] 

That's a great idea. 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: And you'll have to describe it for anyone with low vision when you come on camera with your ugly sweater. 

MONICA OLSSON: Alt sweater, alt text, in the chat or something. 

[LAUGHS] 

Well, we've gone through what we needed to talk about with everyone today. So if there are any other questions or comments, I think we can go ahead. And I'm going to stop our recording and we can say our goodbyes.