CHRISTOPHER SORAN: The recording has started. All right. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the April edition-- or may edition of the Accessibility Forum. Appreciate you all coming. Appreciate your time. We'll get rolling on this month's updates. I'm Christopher Soran, the application support manager here at the State Board. All right. We'll talk about PeopleTools, talk about some time pages and a little bit of Title II. So in April 26, we deployed PeopleTools 8.61. We upgraded from PeopleTools 8.59. There was look and feel changes. If you're using the non screen reader mode of PeopleSoft as well as when you're in the screen reader mode, there's additional-- there's some new skip to main content changes. That was probably the highlight of the tools update, as well as the new accessibility button that was up there. We talked about those last month. Now I was just curious now that it's been deployed, everybody's had a chance to click around and use it. It seems to work all right for you or is it useful having that skip to main content there? Having to go through the banner every time? VICKI WALTON: Those are Christopher, this is Vicki only. Those are just pluses to usability and accessibility of the tools. So it's a nice change. CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Good. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. All right, sounds like it's working for folks. That's good. It's always nice to have some new changes in there. So on the HCM side, we got to take it a while back about not being able to distinguish between-- when entering time, being able distinguish between two jobs that have the same job title and which one to enter the time for. And so we had added on the Enter Time page, Oracle had delivered this new functionality with drop zones, and we added additional information at the top leveraging that functionality so someone could tell which job they were entering the time for. And with one of the HCM updates last year, Oracle delivered some-- this configurable header functionality, which allows us to add additional information in this configurable header on pages. And so we're working on not only adding more information on that entry time page, but as well as the Time Summary page. Absence Balances, Cancel Absence, View Request, Manage Absence. So when you're on those additional-- on those pages, you'll see that additional information about the job. So you'll be able to-- especially in the instances where someone has two jobs with the same job title, it'll help be able to distinguish between those two, not just on that Entry Time page, but on all these other time pages as well. So that'll be helpful for both screenreader users as well as non-screen reader users, having that information at the top of the page. So we're leveraging that new functionality. And so that just passed our initial testing. And so next phase will be the user acceptance testing. So I'm going to invite-- test things out. So yeah, it'll be nice to build leverage that new functionality and make it more useful for both our screen reader and non-screen reader users. So that's in the pipeline, in the works. And I am working on setting up a meeting with some folks at Oracle to discuss the title II compliance by April 26. I'll let you know about that. I certainly want to make sure they're in compliance, as well as every other vendor that we work with are in compliance. I guess just a reminder, we're not the vendor, but I certainly will make every one of the vendors-- [CHUCKLES] I'm going to push them all, get compliant. And we'll be working with them on any specifics that need to get changed, upgraded, fixed, anything we know of or you know of, let us know. I'm certainly pushing all of them all the time. This is what we do. So we'll be continuing that. But yeah, we're going to have a specific meeting to talk about that, that compliance. VICKI WALTON: Christopher, this is Vicki. Do you have any input on there? Their openness to complying with this new ruling? CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Well, I haven't had that meeting with them yet, but-- VICKI WALTON: Well, sure. I've seen emails go out, but I just wondered if you had a gut feeling for their attitude towards this. CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Well, I've been working on trying to build a more positive relationship with Oracle and their team around accessibility stuff so we can continue to make improvements in the system. Continue to get those and have it be more of a collaborative relationship where we're-- yeah, we're helping them as much as we can and they're helping us instead of clashing. VICKI WALTON: Yeah. CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Difficult. We had a lot of challenging years-- even in the previous, we're trying to get things better. It seemed like every service request we put in would just be-- take months to get through. They'd want this information, that information, it just would really just put us through every hoop we could, and we'll go through them all. [CHUCKLES] VICKI WALTON: Yeah. CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Whatever it takes. However long it takes. MARY GERARD: Title II might be where the rubber meets the road. [CHUCKLING] CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Yeah. MARY GERARD: Because as we all who are knee deep in it. That it is incredibly intense. And with a vendor, I'm holding out hope, Christopher, because you have built such a lovely relationship with them. VICKI WALTON: Yeah. MARY GERARD: And I know that just at our college, working those relationships with others-- in fact, Christian who's on this call, he recently had some success with a vendor, actually saying that they would work to become more accessible in the next year. But Oracle is a beast. So a smaller vendor might be like, yeah, we don't want to lose your business, but Oracle might be, yeah, sorry. [CHUCKLES] So I look forward to hearing what you hear. VICKI WALTON: Yeah. JOSH: And to speak to that, This is Josh from SBCTC, we work with small vendors as well. One of them being Cass Tech, who designed the online admissions application that all the 34 schools use. And when they first rolled out, it was not very accessible at all. But because they're a small company, we were able to work closely with them. And we continue to work closely with them to roll out improvements along the way. CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Yeah, Cass Tech's been a great partner. They're quick to work on accessibility fixes and work with us. And so yeah, smaller vendors are nice. And while I am trying to always build a positive relationship with all these vendors, I'll certainly continue to push. [CHUCKLES] There's nothing about being a pushover. I'm going to stick to it. No matter how long it takes or how persistent I have to be, we'll get there. So yeah, I'm always going to advocate for our students and our faculty and staff and the system. Make sure they have the most accessible experience they can with every tool we have and we use. So I'm just going to keep at it. That's my plan. [CHUCKLES] Yeah, so yeah, that's great to hear that also-- yeah, thank you, Josh, for sharing that. And yeah, has anybody else had any other specific vendors they've been-- had success with this deadline? Kind of puts a timeline on things instead of just, you have to be compliant. [CHUCKLES] Yeah, it's all good. Yeah. MARY GERARD: I see Christian turned off his-- Yeah, his mute. I can't hear you, though. Can't hear you, Christian. CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Oh, I'm sorry, Christian, I can't quite hear you. MARY GERARD: Cannot hear you. CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Oh, we got that double mute. I got the same headset and-- CHRISTIAN CAMPBELL: Can you hear me now? MARY GERARD: Yes. CHRISTIAN CAMPBELL: I get fidgety and I start squeezing things and I mute myself. So the vendor I'm working with is Pavilion. They're a procurement website. And starting the process of engaging them now. So as I have successes or failures, I'll bring it up in the group, but they're quite keen, so it's a good example. On the other side of things, we're getting some free software gifted to us. And I'm trying to get accessibility information from them. And I'm not getting anywhere. So I'm just doing the poking and prodding thing and reaching out. And at some point, there's going to have to be that discussion about, unfortunately, we can't use this if we can't make it accessible or at least work to make it accessible at this point. So we'll see how that one goes. So I've got two sides of the spectrum right now going on. CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Yeah. Appreciate you sharing that. It's actually nice to hear these experiences. So that's all the topics for today. I'm pretty focused on just continuing to submit our service requests and tickets to the vendors, and PeopleTools is a big multi month project. It's nice to finally get that one done. Yeah. So if you have any other questions or a future forum ideas, feel free to let me know or submit to our forum. Let's go to our accessibility web page. And our meeting next month, same time, same place. [CHUCKLES] Second Tuesday at 11:00 AM. Yeah. I appreciate everyone's time. Thanks for coming today. VICKI WALTON: Thank you, Christopher. Thank you very much. See you next time. MARY GERARD: Thanks, Christopher.