CHRISTOPHER SORAN: We are recording. 

MONICA OLSSON: Awesome, great. OK. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to April's Accessibility and ctcLink Open Forum. I think it's going to be a short and sweet meeting today. 

We do have some folks from the colleges here on the call. Thank you. And we do have a captioner here with us as well if you need that to follow along. And I see David's got something in the chat. So we'll get there-- we'll get to that in a minute. So I will hand it over to Chris to get us through the first couple of slides. And then I can share a mini Okta MFA update that is not in the slides, but I can share some information. 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Yeah, sounds great. All right. Welcome everybody. I'm Christopher, thanks for coming to April's edition of the forum. So we have a minor PeopleTools update coming. We're working on the-- going from 8.61.08 to 8.61.17. So bug fixes, security fixes. 

And the accessibility fixes often come in the PeopleTools updates. There are some that come in individual pillar updates as well obviously. And we continue to report on those. But the big time accessibility updates come in the more of the system level in these tools updates. So always look forward to these updates. 

And so we'll be going through some of the changes that are coming. Nothing too big, but we'll go over those next month. One win that we got was-- so when you're in Firefox and you have the focus on the calendar button, it gets read out as button instead of calendar button. Which button could be anything, so it's not very helpful. 

It reads fine in Chrome, so and in any of the Chrome derivatives. But didn't read right in Firefox. This one actually took a couple years and many closed and reopened as service requests with Oracle. It was quite a journey to get this one fixed. 

You wouldn't think it would be so hard, but we got there and I'm excited it's finally here. So this is one of our wins that's coming in PeopleTools 8.61.17. It's especially important if you're trying to fill out leave. You need to pick a date. So yeah, it helps the calendar functionality. 

Another substantial issue that was introduced when we went into 08 was the Enter button on all the search pages when you were in screen reader mode did not function like a enter button should have. Their documentation states that the Enter button on a search page should act like a Submit button, and it should submit the form. 

And instead what it was doing, and this was specific to Google Chrome and edge, it was clearing out all of the fields on the page instead of submitting it. So the user had no idea why the page was still there. And why there was no longer fields or values in the fields that they entered. 

So you can imagine that was a substantial issue for the front line staff that might have a student on the phone and they're trying to get their information. They have to repeat and keep asking them for it. So we're glad that is now fixed in 0.17, and users will be able to return to using Chrome and Chrome derivatives. 

MONICA OLSSON: It's really takes us back to the basics of buttons and links need to be labeled properly. So that in the coding so that they function properly for the assistive tech user. 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: For sure, yeah. And you're not expecting to have your fields cleared out when you go-- 

MONICA OLSSON: Yes. 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: You have to completed now. The page cleared? Yeah. Extra confusing. All right-- 

MONICA OLSSON: And I addressed David's question in the chat. I don't think it's something we need to give specific airtime to since we'll keep the focus on ctcLink. 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: OK, sounds good. Sure. Thanks, Mark. Yeah. And this just came in this morning, so I thought I'd report out. We got a win. 

MONICA OLSSON: Yeah. 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Yeah. So Okta accepted three of our issues and fixed them. During the previews, we just got noticed there in the preview site right now, so we don't have a date. They're going to come to production. But there will be. 

So the three issues-- there was a lack of keyboard focus when you're using Okta Verify on Windows. They fixed that. They've got blue focus indicators now. When you're in the end-user settings and you're going to personal information the disabled fields. It wasn't very clear. So now the UI has been reworked. So yeah. Now the non-edible user information has its own section. It's more clear. 

And then the third one was when you're on that personal information page, the Edit button disappears but the focus stays on it. So now the focus goes to the right spot and when that button goes away. So it was nice to-- always nice to win over the vendor and have them fix all the issues we report instead of having to go so much back and forth. 

MONICA OLSSON: Yeah. And I'll just note so as a reminder, I'm a broken record. Okta is the multifactor authentication tool that we all use for ctcLink. And depending on your local colleges decisions, you might be using it for more apps than just ctcLink, as we do here at the State Board. And [? Vicky ?] [? Welton, ?] who's not on the call today, and [? Josh ?] [? Jiahu, ?] who is on the call today, as well as Chris and I attend regular accessibility check in meetings with Okta team members. 

And Vicky and Josh recently did some accessibility testing and evaluation on recent Okta redesign updates and provided reports on issues that remain. The three that Chris just went over right now in slide five of our slide deck are in-- have fixes now assigned to them essentially from Okta in the preview environment. So that will get into production relatively soon. There are other issues that were noted in the reports, but we don't have a timeline on those yet. 

Yeah, go ahead. 

MICHAEL HANSCOM: Yeah, I'm just curious. Are we their main driver of improvements? Like, do we ever bring something up to them? And they're like, oh, yeah, somebody else told us about this. We've been working on that for months. Or is this primarily we were holding Okta accountable? 

MONICA OLSSON: So I think we are their noisiest customer set around accessibility. I mean certainly we're not-- they're a big company. They have lots of customers. But I think as an organized group or entity, we're the noisiest. 

And we've also to my knowledge, I don't know of another customer that has asked and made them commit to reoccurring accessibility check in meetings. I think that would be awesome if other customers did that, but I'm not aware of it. I will say that there have been some ups and downs and bumps in the road in terms of what they've reported to us as their internal accessibility program organization. And so they have internal efforts in place. And it's really great when we actually have a product manager join our meetings because they give us the really concrete information. 

But it sounds like they're really trying to build it up into something a bit more robust, because what I'm finding is that sometimes we're bringing them issues that thankfully they're already aware of. And then sometimes we're bringing them issues that they did not catch themselves, which we've pointed out to them more than once. That's an issue you need to think through, like, why are we catching these things and you guys aren't? So what are the steps that are missing in your internal program? 

They've been receptive to that feedback, more so than other vendors that we've been in calls with. So that's good. So I think they're aware that there's some gaps there. And I'm also happy that they continue to be in some contractual agreement with DQ, which is the third-party accessibility firm. And so DQ is helping to work with them to do platform audits to update their VPATs. And that's a really good place to where they're holding themselves accountable, because they have a third-party coming in and looking at their design. 

But to answer your question, I am not aware of other vendors that are kind of doing the same thing that we're doing with them. But I don't want to stop what we're doing either, even though I'm like, you guys are benefiting from our time and our expertise. It's kind of worth it, I think, at the end of the day, because when they ticket our issues and resolve them, we are benefiting too as customers. Does that answer your question? 

MICHAEL HANSCOM: Yeah, that's awesome. It was just kind of a curious question that popped into mind, because we have these regular sessions of, we talked about this and they're working on it. So I was just curious, does anybody else do this? So that's good to know. And very seriously, yay us. That's awesome. And good on Okta for being willing to work with us. And not nearly as seriously, when do we get a discount for being their QA? 

MONICA OLSSON: I know we all say that with a little smile on our face and a giggle, but I said it not so jokingly at our last meeting with them. I said, you guys are essentially benefiting from free expert testing. So y'all need to figure it out internally and shape up a little bit, or we got to think about changing our relationship a little bit. 

MICHAEL HANSCOM: Nice. 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: And I don't know what will come of that, but Chris was in that meeting, Josh was on that call. People heard me say it. 

MICHAEL HANSCOM: Nice. Excellent. Cool. Thanks. 

JOSH: That sounds about right. 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Yeah. Josh is straight up providing the coding solution to some vendors. We've helped a lot. 

MONICA OLSSON: Yeah. And I think there are other higher ed institutions or public agencies that would say maybe that we're going a little too far when we do that in our collaboration efforts with vendors. But I just feel like we are so doggedly committed to trying to make these things better and usable for our users and our community that it's hard for me-- and I think Josh and Chris and Padma agree-- it's hard for me to argue not doing that, especially when they work with us and they do change something for the better. 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Yeah. Providing the equitable experience for our students and faculty and staff, that's why we're here. That's why we're doing all this. Whatever it takes, we'll make it happen. That's just my thought. Oh, yeah. Go ahead. I see your hand raised, Agnes. 

AGNES: So following up with Michael's question or comment, then, out of all the vendors that you deal with, is Okta the one that has shown, I guess, more commitment to listening and engaging with us? 

JOSH: I'd say they're either all trending to put accessibility at a higher priority than they've been in, let's say, five years ago. When certain vendors have a different relationship with us and their approach fixes differently, but we tend to get the positive reaction and not much pushback from our third-party vendors. 

Oracle is a little bit different of a story. They tend to push back more. But like Okta OAP, which is our online admissions application, the vendor for that, they've gone from not really knowing much about accessibility to having probably one of the most accessible applications around. 

And HighPoint, which is our mobile application, HCX, in the last couple of years, they've also made a big push and commitment to making the interfaces accessible. And they've contracted with Pearson. It was a school for the blind, and they did manual accessibility testing and came back with reports. 

Every once in a while, we run into issues where they'll do a new feature, and it might be maybe a new developer coding that and they might miss a couple labels. But we finding they're really receptive to our feedback and getting those fixes out the door as quick as possible. 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Thank you. Yeah, our goal is to develop good relationships with the vendors so that we can win people over and get fixes, get solutions as quickly as we can. So yeah. Yeah. So we've got some open SRs right now and then some fixes coming in future images. But nothing in the last month to report out. Just continuing on. Yeah. 

MONICA OLSSON: So we still have our submission form on the ctcLink Accessibility web page that users can submit questions or topic requests to. And then the rest of the slide, I think it just has the resources and reminders. And the other thing I'll mention is-- and I don't know if we'll have more updates by the May open forum or not. It might be closer. It might be the June open forum. 

But there are a couple of administrative staff in our college community that we're hoping to meet with real time to get some feedback on some assistive tech user issues and barriers around ctcLink. So we might have additional things to push Oracle about after that meeting. And if things progress there, we'll continue to update this community. I know it's really small call, but do folks have any questions or comments for us right now? 

AGNES FIGUEROA: I'm good. 

MONICA OLSSON: OK, cool. Before you all hop off, is-- did David leave? I was going to just talk about audio description for two minutes, but did David leave? He was the one that asked the question. 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: I'm not seeing him in the participant list. No. 

MONICA OLSSON: OK. Do you mind stopping the recording? Just [INAUDIBLE]. 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Yeah. Recording done.