CHRISTOPHER SORAN: And we're recording. Good morning, everybody, and welcome to our monthly ctcLink Accessibility Forum. Let me go ahead and get screen sharing. There we go. All right. It shouldn't be too long today. Just got a few updates. The things we're working on right now, Campus Solutions has a new image, it was 32. We're working on getting implemented in system, as well as we're working on getting the HighPoint Campus Experience or HCX version 24.2.1. We're going to get those deployed on some day. So we're excited for all the accessibility updates that are coming in HCX. MONICA OLSSON: And Chris, this is Monica. I actually recall from our last open forum, we stated some specific accessibility things that were improved in the 24.2.1 version of HCX. So I'd have to go back to my notes. But I recall that being like, hey, actually, they're addressing some of the things we've brought to their attention in this new version. CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Yes. Yeah. So there's one enhancement request we have in the queue to work, to make a payment page from classic to fluid. MONICA OLSSON: OK. CHRISTOPHER SORAN: But other than that, when we implement 24.2, it will be fully WCAG 2.1 AA compliant. So once we get the HCX update, and then we fix that make a payment page will be 100% AA. MONICA OLSSON: That's really exciting news for our colleges. So I think most of our-- a lot of our colleges are routing their students to the HCX experience rather than just regular vanilla PeopleSoft. And I'm saying this for the benefit of Michael and Doug and Mary, et cetera, and Aaron on the call. We've gone over many times before. HCX is the mobile version of ctcLink, and some colleges are still calling it ctcLink mobile, which is not entirely accurate, it should be called HCX. So that's a huge step in the right direction for the usability experience for our students. But also important to know that HCX is just the student portion of PeopleSoft, so it's not all four pillars inside that application. CHRISTOPHER SORAN: That's true. Yeah. Thanks for clarification. Yeah, but it is a lot of the stuff the students use the most registering. MONICA OLSSON: Yeah, yeah. CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Yeah. Yeah, excited for those. So we're reviewing and testing all of the accessibility updates, the high points they delivered, as well as that Oracle said they delivered in CS 32. So we're making sure that trying to figure out what they changed based on the descriptions. Sometimes, we got to dig into the code. And so we'll be sharing. We're working on the image overview document, well, for the functionality, as well as the dedicated accessibility one. I'm going to show off all the changes that are coming. So that's our work in progress right now. MONICA OLSSON: Yep, that sounds great. CHRISTOPHER SORAN: And so speaking of image overview documents, we have the human capital management or HCM image 49, accessibility image overview document. And so that will be-- that update is coming soon as well. So I'm going to share another screen. MONICA OLSSON: And while Chris is pulling that document up, again, for the benefit of our colleagues from the colleges online, these accessibility overview documents are posted on the ctcLink Open Forum web page. So if you want to download it and share it with your upper management or your ctcLink project managers, these documents give specific information about the accessibility enhancements of the updates that are the new images that are being pushed out, specific to what the documents reporting on. CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Yeah. So this one's not quite online yet. It will be soon. You're getting an early preview of the document. MONICA OLSSON: A prelude. CHRISTOPHER SORAN: A prelude, yes, for the-- yeah. So the first one is here. So partner image 49, when you were on this paycheck selection grid, so if you wanted to select a paycheck and see what paycheck shows, you had to select-- so what I'm showing there on the screen is a screenshot of the paychecks page. And what's highlighted in that screenshot is the first dollar amount of the paycheck in the net pay column. And so previously, the paycheck selection hyperlinks were in the net pay column row. So you had to go into the table, go through check date, go through company, go through pay begin date, pay end date, and then go over to net pay before you selected it, and then your paycheck would come up. Now you can go directly to the check date. So it's the very first column. So I'm going to go ahead and scroll down a little bit. And so what we have here is a screenshot of how it's changed. So now, well, after the update, when you go to select the check date, it'll pull up your paycheck, so you don't have to go three columns over in the table. So that makes a lot more sense. So there was also some inconsistent navigation between all the time pages. So if you were on enter time, report time, time summary, manage absence, any of those time pages, and you hit the back button, you'd expect to be brought back to the time dashboard, where it was bringing you back to was the employee self-service, and then you have to go back into time and then go back into whatever page you wanted to-- or tile you wanted to go into. And so now it brings you-- now when you hit back, it brings you back to the time dashboard. So it's more consistent. It was happening on some pages but not others. And so now there's a consistent experience with how you're navigating around. So what I'm showing here is a screenshot at the top of the report time page. And highlighted in the top left is the employee self-service. So if you were to go back one step and bring you back to the employee self-service, and then what is highlighted in the screenshot below is the word time. So you're on the report time page here, the same page. But now after the update, when you select that back, it's going to bring you back to time dashboard. That's showing the screenshots there. Another thing that was fixed was-- so the focus was incorrectly shifting to the banner. So when you're entering data on the page with your keyboard, you expect to stay on the same page. So if you were-- so let's say you were on this enter time page, and you were to select like previous or next. You would expect that the focus would stay in there, so you could keep hitting Next, Next, or Previous, Previous, go to another month. It was kicking the focus back up to the top of the page. So then, you'd have to navigate your way back down your screen reading it. And so now the focus stays where it's supposed to be. So what I'm showing here is a screenshot of the entire time page, highlighting where you can select the previous or next month. And now there's another screenshot here. I'm going to scroll down now. We're on the Enter time page. When you're selecting that previous, it's going to stay. The focus isn't going to jump back up to the top of the page. PADMA: It was going to banner where you have all the buttons for home, et cetera. CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Nice clarification. Yeah. That makes more sense. Yeah. So another thing that was fixed-- so the date edit box wasn't visible in the calendar widget when you're on the time summary and enter time pages. So the calendar widget has two parts-- the date edit box where you can type a date in and the date picker. So in the edit box, you can manually type in. Like here in this example screenshot, 08/01/2024, or you can also select the date picker. And then the date picker, the calendar comes up. And then you can select a date using the calendar widget. So prior to image 49, on the enter time and the time summary pages, it was missing that date edit box, so you couldn't manually type in a date. So you can only enter a date by the date picker in the calendar control date picker. So now on those pages, that date edit box where you can manually type in the date, it's there now on that enter time and time summary pages. You can type it in without having to use the date picker, or you can still use the date picker. That's a good change, more consistency in the system. So, yeah. So what we have here at the top of the page is a screenshot with the calendar widget missing the date edit box on the anytime page prior to image 49. And I'm going to go ahead and scroll down. And then in the screenshot below that, it is sharing the calendar widget with the date edit box on the enter time page. So it's highlighted, showing that you can type in the date. Another thing that was fixed was tab key focus. It was skipping the date entry box. We're talking about the date entry box, the change there, so on the report time page. So prior to the image, if you were pressing the tab key, you're trying to get into the calendar widget, the focus was skipping over the date edit box and jumping you straight into the calendar widget or the calendar control. So image 49, they fix this. So now when you hit the tab, it correctly pops you into the sets of focus directly in that date edit box, where you can type in the date. And then if you hit Tab again, it brings you over to the calendar control. So better tapping without skipping over, things that should be focusing on. MONICA OLSSON: This is what I get-- these improvements are going to significantly improve the experience of an IT user, performing those functions on these pages. I mean. calendar widgets are huge, navigating tables, everything you just listed there. That's really big. CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Yeah, if you're-- I mean, if you're entering time, you're just going to have a much better experience. PADMA: Yeah, it took like two years. We had like nine things opened for service requests. So one by one, they had to-- we had to get those fixed. CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Yeah, a lot of this is thanks to [INAUDIBLE] for putting in those service requests, going back and forth with Oracle, and we need this, and we need that, and just convince these are problems, and they need to be fixed. Yeah. And like you said, over the last couple of years, this has been a series of service requests we put in and pushed for to make happen, and yeah, seeing it come to fruition with this update after all this time. PADMA: Yeah, teamwork, dream work. MONICA OLSSON: Yeah, totally. And Padma, that's a lot of advocacy on your end. And two years, that's a long time to keep pushing and convincing, but I'm glad you did it because these are significant improvements to the usability of these pages. PADMA: Thank you. Christopher was also pushing the managers to know how to fix this. CHRISTOPHER SORAN: I don't take no for an answer. PADMA: Yeah. Teamwork, dream work. Thanks. CHRISTOPHER SORAN: I got years of patience. I can wear them down. These fixes are going to get fixed. Deal with me. So yeah, I'm excited for this update. And the [INAUDIBLE] update, so we got a lot of cool stuff coming in the next October, November coming to production. MONICA OLSSON: I'm thrilled about the HCX update. That's going to make so many colleges happy. CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Oh, yeah. MONICA OLSSON: With the overview document that you were just screen sharing with us, Chris and Padma, when will that be online? PADMA: So Tammy will review it. And yeah, after she gives go ahead, then it will be posted. Yeah. Because it's the whole image. So they will be doing the other application image part, and then she will make sure the format and everything is consistent. And she will approve it. MONICA OLSSON: OK. SPEAKER: Yeah. CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Yeah, before the image goes live, they'll be posted online. We want to give you an early preview here today. Hey, Mary. How's it going? MARY GERARD: Hey, gang. I have a question. It's not necessarily related to all of these awesome updates you're providing. I'm just thinking about, as, as I attend these meetings, the information is great, z and it's, whoah. You know, as a disability services provider, it tends to be over my head. It's really important stuff. So I am asking this group as a collective, like a hive mind. What positions at our colleges should we really be pushing to attend these meetings? Because what you're doing as a team is remarkable and useful and important. I just would love to be able to convey to the appropriate positions on my campus what is involved here and how they can gain information. So I'm thinking, of course, my accessibility person, my what used to be Policy 188, that person needs to be here. What other positions? Because, as I'm thinking-- I'm thinking, OK, maybe business office, as you're talking about some of these things and how employees who are assistive technology users would benefit. Who else? MONICA OLSSON: I'll take an initial stab at responding to that question. I agree with you, Mary. I think it is good for the disability services folks to be in these conversations. And I agree, some of this is, perhaps, more, more technical than your area of scope or focus. Yes, whoever each college has designated as their Policy 188 coordinator would be a great perspective to add to these conversations. If a college has hired someone who is specifically their role is specific around, assistive technology or accessibility functional testing at the college. Sometimes, that is also the Policy 188 coordinator. And sometimes, it's a separate role. That person, I think, would benefit from these conversations because they're going to be looking at it from an IT user or testing perspective. Personally, I think that the IT folks that are colleges want to know this information, and maybe they don't know that they want to know this information. MARY GERARD: Right. That's exactly right. And it's an hour a month. I'm thinking, that is really not a lot of time to devote to something that could be fairly impactful. We also have someone on our campus who is our-- we call it our CS business analyst, which is a fancy name for the CS pillar. He is the person who helps student services keep moving with ctcLink. And I'm thinking that he would be incredibly useful, or he would find this useful information. I've written down a couple that you said, Monica. Does anybody else have any suggestions? Christopher, can you think of any particular people on our campuses that may benefit? CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Well, the business analyst was a good example, for anybody who has those on their campuses, or just generic business analysts doing support for-- anybody that would do like support for ctcLink, or anybody that, even if they don't attend these meetings, at least check out the image overview documents and see what changes are coming. Because if you're somebody working in HR, helping people with their timesheets or something like that, this is good to have. Or if you're supporting students and you're recommending that they check out the HCX app to know what those updates are. PADMA: Yeah. We also have Q&A sessions for each image. There are two Q&A sessions where we actually go through these image overview documents. So if they're attending those, then they will get that. MONICA OLSSON: And those Q&A sessions, Mary, are usually posted pretty widely across system listservs, some that I'm not on. But I get that information, and I am posting that Q&A information to [INAUDIBLE] Cato, et cetera. But those are great sessions for the business analyst or the HR person who's doing the employee accommodations to listen in on, so they're aware of what the changes and updates are. But like Chris said, any college employee that's doing ctcLink specific support or project management in their role would make sense to me in these conversations because they're also at the campus. Ideally, they should be-- that when college employees have questions or concerns, they're helping to funnel or channel-- Oh, wow, Zoom thinks they want to raise my hand, just because I'm talking with my hands. That's interesting. I have not seen it do that before. Oh my gosh. I got distracted. I'm sorry. But those roles are like a bridge between State Board, ctcLink staff, and colleges. Yeah. MARY GERARD: Thank you. That's helpful. I think that, as we ramp up our accessibility team in September, I'm going to throw this out because these folks are on the accessibility team, but they're not attending. And I think they're just expecting me to attend. And I am smart enough to know what I don't know. MONICA OLSSON: Yeah. Yeah. MARY GERARD: Yeah, I'll get them. I'll try to figure out a way to coerce them into getting this information and then disseminating it across campus. MONICA OLSSON: Yeah. And the slide decks from each open forum and the recording are posted online as well. So I don't really think people are going back and watching 30 minutes or an hour-long recording very often. But if they need to, it's there. And all the slide decks are there as well. MARY GERARD: I'd be curious from the other folks here. So Michael and Natalie and Doug from higher ed, what are your thoughts, or do you have people on your campuses that you think would be great joining this monthly? DOUG HAYMAN: Well, yeah, I think it's a good question you bring up, Mary, because I only use a really narrow band of ctcLink. And I'm the sole accessibility person. And I don't know if there's two dozen other people that do all those other elements that Christopher is showing. I don't know who goes in there and does this versus that, students using it only versus some other staff member. And so it does bring a good point. If you're representing and you know the general overview of accessibility, but eventually, an employee that's using ctcLink runs into trouble, then you would at least be able to direct them to Christopher and his team and get something fixed. But a lot of this, it's more of a, I don't know, interesting thing for me. But I haven't interacted with probably 99% of what ctcLink calls for us to interact with. MARY GERARD: It makes me wonder too, Doug-- thank you for that. It makes me wonder if our pillar leads-- when we did the rollout of ctcLink, we had leads for each pillar-- if they should be aware of these enhancements moving forward so that they can help in the business office or in HR, like you were saying, or our CS pillar lead here in student services. I just wrote that down, too, because I'm thinking it's really good information. And maybe we need to let them know this is happening. MONICA OLSSON: They should be aware, yeah. MICHAEL HANSCOM: Here at Highline, I haven't heard of anything from anybody here at Highline about problems. So, I mean, all of these things are great things. I just don't know if they're affecting people here or noticing them. I do have a meeting coming up just next week, actually. One of our IT people reached out to me asking to talk about just general accessibility for all of our front facing web-based stuff. And so I figure they're certainly a good person to at least let them know about this I can either make sure they know about the meetings, or I can just pass the document on to them so they know about it. So certainly, them, I think I could pass it on to our CIO. But I think he has so much on his plate that he would assume it was delegated whether or not it actually was delegated to anybody other than me. But there's at least one person I can think of here who would at least be interested in knowing whether or not they decide to attend. MONICA OLSSON: Yeah, or asking the CIO if they're assuming it's already delegated. And it's not saying, can you help delegate appropriately attendance at our college to these conversations? That person might be able to have insight that I might not have around who should be coming from their area. DOUG HAYMAN: And I also wanted to say that early on, when I joined CATO, I would hear people talking about ctcLink. And Zach, in particular, was working that split role of IT and working the disability office and being a supervisor to students. So he was running into stuff with what he needed to interact with ctcLink. And then occasionally, his students, if they had disabilities, were also running into snags. So somebody like him probably saw 70% more accessibility issues than I ever would just because of not only the tasks they were doing in the program but also other people that they were interacting with also needing to use the program. MONICA OLSSON: And that's why, Doug and Mary, it is good, I think, for the DS folks to still be in this space with us because if you are sitting down next to a student, helping them engage in a task using regular ctcLink, PeopleSoft, or HCX, and there is an accessibility barrier being encountered, it's helpful when y'all can help capture that information for us to then go in and test and verify and then put into a ticket. So, Mary, even if some of these documents or update conversations are, to borrow your words, a little bit over your head because of the technical vernacular or whatever, you're still offering us here at the State Board a really useful perspective because of the relationship you have with students with disabilities. MARY GERARD: Thank you. That is true. I'm thinking of an "and" kind of situation, because at our college-- and I don't know about other colleges-- but we've moved away from the model where, oh, a student has a disability. Send them to AR. Now it's more where our navigators are meeting their accessibility needs when they're sitting with them and doing this. And so that makes me really curious. Should accessibility of ctcLink, which is now our figurehead here of the entire state, should this troubleshooting accessibility be something that is done by everybody and not just folks like Doug or myself? So you know me, Monica. It's like, let's get them all together. Let's have a party. MONICA OLSSON: Yeah, I think the pillar leads at the colleges are a great place to start. And I'm also thinking that Chris and I could bring this question to Grant, who might be able to do some messaging out to ITC or Stack or something to help folks remember what the purpose of these open forums are and why they should be on the radar of various people. Maybe not Grant, but-- MARY GERARD: Yeah, thank you for letting me bring this conversation up. It's just something that was hitting me as I was watching Chris' presentation there. And I thought, there's so many people I know that could benefit from this information firsthand. So thank you. DOUG HAYMAN: And I wanted to express the one person who said that, Aaron. I just want to appreciate Christopher and Padma and Josh for all the work they're doing. Having a dedicated team that's just chipping away at the beast that is Oracle on a regular basis is a really great thing to have. Thanks. CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Thank you, Doug. I appreciate it. PADMA: Thanks. CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Yeah, we tackled a lot of fixes over the last four years since I've been here, so which is good. MONICA OLSSON: Absolutely. CHRISTOPHER SORAN: It's great to hear. Thanks, everybody. MONICA OLSSON: Oh, so are we kind of at the end? CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Yeah. MONICA OLSSON: OK. So this is Monica again. I had an update I wanted to bring to this conversation that I didn't end up getting into our slide deck. I apologize. And it's something that I'll be also keeping CATO abreast of. But all of us now, especially those working at the colleges, should be aware of the system-wide conversation we're having about the RFP that's currently in development to identify a student success advising software solution that will most likely be used by all of our colleges and integrate in with ctcLink. So is there anyone who's totally shocked by what I just said, or we all are aware that this is happening? OK, great. But I think that folks don't quite know where we're at right now in that process. And I certainly can't speak to every single step. But the RFP itself has not been published publicly for vendors to respond to. So first, what folks need to know is that there has been no selection of a product or reviewing or scoring of a product. So if you're hearing that-- and I shockingly have from a couple of people-- that is inaccurate. It has not happened yet. The RFP itself, which is the document that vendors respond to, to put their hat in the ring, so to speak, that's still in active development right now. Vicky Walton, who's out right now, and I are on that task force to make sure that accessibility compliant to WCAG standards and the usability of the product by staff and students with disabilities is thoroughly included as a functional requirement in the RFP where we're actually laying out specifically what that means beyond just give us a VPAT. So we're going above and beyond what has happened before, which is, oh, we got a VPAT. That must mean something great. So the vendors are going to have to do more than that to demonstrate and verify for us what they claim around accessibility. And accessibility is going to be scored and weighted appropriately along the other functional requirements that we're stating this program has to do for our system. So it's going to be given its appropriate weight in the overall scoring of the products. And so there's two things. So one thing that we're going to do, which I don't think happened with ctcLink, for example, just because back then, Chris wasn't here. Monica wasn't here. It was a different game, a different conversation, is when we get to our kind of our final candidates that we're going to put in the RFP a notice to suppliers that if they make it to the final round, they know that they're going to be invited to do an accessibility demo live meeting with us, where we're putting them in the hot seat for however many minutes. And the idea is that you've given us this VPAT. We've read it. We have questions. It's now your turn to verify for us what you're claiming on this piece of paper is your level of compliance to these standards. So that's something that we're putting into the process. The other thing I want to give you is this is a work in progress. It's not the final draft. But I've been working along with Vicky and with Kristen, who is part of DSST, to come up with categories and questions around accessibility compliance. And I'm going to copy and paste into the chat what our working categories and questions are so you can see where we're improving this process. But please know that this isn't the final version. And that's really the update I wanted to bring to you all. It's not specific ctcLink. But it's important because it's going to be interacting with ctcLink. OK, so let me grab that information for the copy and paste. MARY GERARD: Also, Monica, I received a PowerPoint yesterday from my vice president of instruction. It's an IC RFP update for summer. And I don't know if people have seen it. It's actually branded with the State Board insignia. Shall I share that with this group so they can see it? I don't think it's private. MONICA OLSSON: I do not know that-- yeah, sure. MARY GERARD: How about if I send it to you, Monica? And then you can make a decision if this group needs to have it. MONICA OLSSON: OK. MARY GERARD: OK. MONICA OLSSON: That sounds great. So I'm putting the first part in the chat. So this is one of the statements around accessibility compliance that we're working on. And it says, it denotes specifically the documents the supplier needs to be prepared to complete for us. And then to get even more specific around categories and questions, let's see if it'll let me put this into the chat. That's too big. I'll have to do it in sections. But I want to stress that this is a work in progress, so this could change and be improved. And thanks for sharing that slide deck with me, Mary. Did you email it to me? MARY GERARD: I did. MONICA OLSSON: OK, I will look at that. So the information I put in the chat-- and it's kind of a lot-- feel free to copy paste it if you want to look at it on your own computers. But that gives you an example of how very specific we are attempting to be around accessibility compliance requirements with this RFP process. Doug, I hope this makes you proud. DOUG HAYMAN: This is good. I think all procurement needs to put them through the hoops like this. OK, now you're going to use a screen reader and navigate your whole product. MARY GERARD: Yeah, let's turn everything off and just use the keyboard. [LAUGHS] MONICA OLSSON: So this is just to make sure that the message is getting out there, that we are working really hard here at the State Board to appropriately think about accessibility from the beginning to the end of this RFP process and also to clarify-- because I don't know why, but I think there's already some confusion out there-- no procurement decision has been made. No scoring or reviewing have products has happened yet. We are not there in the process. CHRISTOPHER SORAN: So which product was it that was picked? [LAUGHS] CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Thanks, Monica. [LAUGHTER] DOUG HAYMAN: Monica could have lifted up her drinking bottle that had the name of the product on it. [LAUGHTER] CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Well, that's a great [INAUDIBLE]. We're putting them through the paces. MONICA OLSSON: Yeah. And we're going to put as much pressure on them as possible. And we know that there's no one perfectly accessible product out there, right? We also have to be realistic in our shopping that anything we choose is going to have some known accessibility gaps. But what we're looking for is, how well is the supplier able to document that? Do they know what those gaps are and how they impact their users? And how are they going to work with us in the long term to address them? If we can feel confident about that, then, likely, we're creating a partnership with a company that's going to walk the walk with us. And if they can't demonstrate that to us, it's a concern for us to be aware of. CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Exactly, yeah. Yeah, like HighPoint with HCX or with the online admission application portal, OAP, stuff, just work with those vendors that have just been so responsive. Anything we found, they're ready to fix it as soon as we report it. So yeah, that kind of good vendor relationship where they're willing to listen and ready to fix stuff, that'll be important as well. MONICA OLSSON: Yep. Well, great. Are there any other questions or comments from anyone? Nope? I think, Chris, that probably brings us to the conclusion of our session today. CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, if you want to chat about anything, to the online form, or you can email me. There's a link to our accessibility web page that has all those image overview documents. And I hope to see you again next month. MONICA OLSSON: Thanks, Chris. Bye, everybody. DOUG HAYMAN: Thanks, everybody. MARY GERARD: Bye. DOUG HAYMAN: Thank you very much. MONICA OLSSON: Thanks, everybody. Bye.