MONICA OLSSON: Meeting might be kind of brief. Cecilia, woo hoo! 

[LAUGHS] 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Got the recording started. 

MONICA OLSSON: OK. 

VICKI WALTON: I'll keep an eye on people if they show up. 

MONICA OLSSON: OK. And I turned the captions on. I hope that's viewable for everyone. I'm not sure. 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Thanks for getting those turned on. 

MONICA OLSSON: Oh, OK. 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Good morning, everybody. I'm Christopher Soran, the Application Support Manager here in our September edition of our ctcLink Open Forum, joined by my lovely colleagues, Monica and Vicki. Thanks 

MONICA OLSSON: Yep, and Vicki and I work in the Education Division on a variety of accessibility projects, and collaborate with Chris for the Open Forums here. 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Yeah, so some fairly quick updates right now. We're currently in progress on our CS 38, our Campus Solutions and our HighPoint Campus Experience, which is the mobile version 26.2. So we're working on updating both of those. 

The Image OverView Document, that's what the IOVD stands for, for both the new functionality that's coming as well as we have a specialized accessibility version, those are being worked on. And we'll be showing those off next month. And then, we're also in progress with the Finance Image 57, accessibility Image OverView Document. And we're anticipating to share that in November. 

MONICA OLSSON: And those documents serve as a way to provide colleges a summary of the things that are changing with the updates that are coming with those new images. And included in those documents are notes about when accessibility bugs have been resolved or enhancements have been made. 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Yeah, we test and review any fixes [INAUDIBLE] make sure that they actually work as well. So we have a little process for [INAUDIBLE]. 

We submitted some accessibility findings to ConexEd. And we're waiting to hear back from them while they review them. 

MONICA OLSSON: Yeah, and I can speak a little bit more to this because I've been-- and Vicki as well, Vicki and Josh partnered together recently to do some additional accessibility, like spot checking within the ConexEd environment. And we've only got three people on the call today, but hopefully you all are familiar. ConexEd is the third-party student success software that was selected during the formal RFP process a year ago. And that consisted of gathering requirements, weighting those requirements, reviewing and scoring all of the vendors that applied or responded to the RFP, and then revealing the successful vendor. 

So it was not random. And accessibility was weighted appropriately against other-- not against, along with other business requirements. Vicki and myself helped establish what those requirements were and what questions would be asked. And so, with that said, ConexEd performed, I feel comfortable saying, moderately well. 

And when it comes to accessibility, they certainly were far beyond some others who put their hat in the ring and not the strongest when it came to accessibility. And with that said, part of the scoring was evaluating the vendor on all of the business requirements in addition to accessibility. So ConexEd was the one selected. And it's going to integrate with ctcLink. So that's one of the reasons why this group here, which is very focused on the Oracle environment, is keeping tabs on ConexEd. 

And there are areas where that product is doing well with accessibility and areas where they need to improve both with their standard web version and mobile app. And Vicki and Josh have been instrumental in helping to communicate and help explain what our concerns have been, as we find them, and ask them for status updates on what their internal teams are doing to remedy that. 

I'm just expanding on what Chris said. Chris said it in 2 seconds. But I love to give context. So right now, the ball is in their court to respond again to us. So we've gave them some questions and some list of concerns. 

We've also asked them some clarifying questions on the work they did with DQ, a third-party accessibility vendor, because it appears as though DQ did some audit work for them, and some remediation work for them as well. So we had some clarifying questions on some of the findings from DQ. And we're just waiting to get all of that information back from them. 

And again, I know I'm only speaking to three people, but your colleges are likely going to be using ConexEd in the future in some way. And so this context, I think, is important for you to know. And I don't expect ConexEd to be perfectly accessible immediately overnight. I think we need to understand that we hope we've engaged in a contractual relationship with the vendor who is very open and eager to continuing to improve their accessibility. And that is a lot of what working with a third-party vendor is. OK, and I'll stop there. 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Those are great points. Thanks, appreciate the context. 

MONICA OLSSON: Okta updates, OK, this can be me again. And Vicki and Josh-- I don't know if Josh came into the room just now, but you can add in here. So Okta is the third-party vendor that provides our MFA, Multi-Factor Authentication tool that colleges and State Board use when logging into the ctcLink Oracle environment. 

And over a year ago, the State Board was successful in establishing a brief monthly accessibility check-in with folks on their team, just really to continue our advocacy efforts and keep their toes to the fire without becoming their unpaid testers. So it's a balance of how much we agree to investigate and do for them to improve our experience versus what we're going to hold them accountable to do on their own. It's just a dance. And that line changes depending on who the vendor is, how big and small they are, what our working relationship with them is like. It's just it's not uniform across all relationships. 

And the two things I want to share about our last conversation with them specifically, and I think this was a couple of weeks ago, is 1, they did confirm with us that as a business, Okta plans to engage with DQ, a third-party accessibility vendor on a yearly basis, once a year to help them do external accessibility audits of their product and to help them generate updated VPATs. So that was good for us to hear, that they're going to have that established relationship. And then, with that said, we are aware they also have room internally with their own teams to develop their internal programming around accessibility design, testing, implementation. 

But that was one thing that was good to hear. And then, the other thing was there had been a list of about 10 items that had come from Josh and Vicki here at the State Board, from their accessibility testing/spot checking of issues for Okta to fix within the MFA user experience. Five of those, they've been able to fix, and five they're working through in their queue. And those were the two main updates I left with from that meeting. Josh or Vicki, if I miss anything, feel free. 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Nope, that was my understanding too. Thank you. Monica. 

MONICA OLSSON: Thank you. 

VICKI WALTON: Yeah, thank you. 

MONICA OLSSON: Awesome. 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Thanks, Monica. We're still waiting for People Tools 863 to resolve a bunch of outstanding stuff that we've submitted. So that will be coming early next year. If you have any more ideas, anything you want us to talk about, let us know. 

MONICA OLSSON: Yeah, so this is a good reminder, and also for you if you're new here, that typically these Open Forums have been a little bit one directional where we're providing the content and updates. But we always welcome our college attendees to bring their questions or comments with them about ctcLink accessibility to these Open Forums. Or you can email us or submit using the online form if you have a question or a topic suggestion. We, as much as possible, invite a two-way conversation to happen. 

I think that's the end of our content, huh? 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Yeah, yeah. 

MONICA OLSSON: OK, cool. 

VICKI WALTON: Short and sweet. 

MONICA OLSSON: Short and sweet. So yeah, our next monthly meeting will be Tuesday, October 13. It's always the same time and same Zoom link. And next week-- or next week. Next month is when we'll have more of information on the image, the updates that are coming into the environment, the IOVD documents that Chris mentioned earlier. 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Yeah, yeah. Something to look forward to next month. Appreciate everybody's time for coming today. 

MONICA OLSSON: Good to see you, Craig. 

VICKI WALTON: Yep, good to see everyone. 

MONICA OLSSON: Really pretty background that you have. 

VICKI WALTON: Looks like Montana.