CHRISTOPHER SORAN: I'm Christopher Soran, the application support manager, and we'll go ahead and get rolling. So we're going to talk about some updates today and where we're at on reviewing our time page, VoIP stuff, and where we are with some currently open Oracle service requests. 

So the star of the show today is PeopleTools 8.59. So on April 29, we're going to be deploying it, and it's got some accessibility fixes. Josh, what are some of the fixes? 

JOSH: So as we saw in some of the last image updates we had in HCM and CS, where they improved some of the styling on the tiles, they've gone further with those updates to the interface on the tools update. They've changed some fonts, but in designs, to make it clear for low-vision users, they've improved the contrast with the color layouts, as well as made the labels more verbose for form controls, as well as the navigation menu for staff. And that's about it. 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Thanks. I was going to show some things as well. So I have the preview of the image overview document, and one thing I wanted to show-- I just want to switch over to my browser. So I'm logged into HCM in capital management, and this applies to-- also, in Canvas Solutions and in Finance. If was going to the top right and you make a selection in the Actions menu and you go to My Preferences, in the General Option section, the second option down, there's a screen reader and Actions menu. 

And this was a feature, not available for, this is new, and you can select that and select the Save button. And now, when we go back, when we select the Actions menu again, there is an Enable Screen Reader mode here. And when you select it, you're presented with a question that says, screen reader mode will be enabled. Would you like it to persist for this setting for subsequent sessions? 

And if you say, yes, then it's just permanently on. If you say, no, it'll only be on for the current session that you're logged in. So you can have it as one time or permanently. So I say, yes and now, it will be enabled. 

So if I were to go back to My Preferences and you see the Screen Reader mode is the selected accessibility layout. So that's a new feature there in the Actions menu you can access. 

JOSH: And as you can see on those buttons and some of the label tags that they're a little bit more verbose, and some of this, what I was talking about earlier about the new button layouts, the higher contrast there, as well as the menu bar at the top, you see the deeper blue against the white makes it a little bit more clear for users. 

MONICA: That's great. Thank you, Josh and Chris, for the preview. And I also want us to recall that a few sessions ago, we talked about the difference between PeopleTools update versus some of the other smaller updates. And I think that might be good to refresh. So I might not be the best person to explain that, so I'm asking that maybe Chris or Josh provide that distinction for us. 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Yeah, so when we talk about PeopleTools versus when we talk about Campus Solutions, Image 27, or Human HCM, Image 47, what have you, those are updates specific to the Campus Solutions or Human Capital Management pillars in just those areas. PeopleTools has ramifications across the entirety of the system, sort of like base-level functionality that all of PeopleSoft leverages throughout the system. 

So it's a little more broad reaching and can sometimes be a little more background changes as well. Not always super visible, but this current PeopleTools update has definitely had some visible changes, if you have vision and are able to see them, like with the color contrast and the different buttons. 

JOSH: And this is Josh again. And for our Screen Reader users, I've found that just on a cursory use of the navigation that it's a lot more verbose, and it's a lot easier to navigate than prior versions. It also, is clear whether you're on a submenu, a folder, or if you're on a page within the navigation, so I'm really happy about that update. 

MONICA: Thank you, Josh. That's great. And Chris, you demoed. It looks like being able to select and turn on Screen Reader mode has become easier for users to select that and make that selection persist across sessions of ctcLink use. So that's good news, and I'll also take this opportunity to remind folks that the State Board, we are in sensitive to and in agreement with many of our users that maintaining those two different user interfaces is not considered best practice, but it is the approach that Oracle is very clear that they're tied to. And so they still are adamant that their recommendation for AT users is to always turn Screen Reader mode on, and that that is not necessarily a reflection of the State Board's opinion, but we are communicating Oracle's messaging around that. 

And so the PeopleTools will be happening at the end of this month? 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Yes, April 29. 

MONICA: Perfect. 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: It's on a Saturday, and the system will be down for most of the day for the update. Yeah, so I thought I'd also show a little preview, the Image Overview document. There's still a couple more things to get added. We got some more details from Oracle on a couple more items. 

But one of the items here, the color contrast on file attachment drag and drop area border, that was set to be in compliance with this area here. When you're doing the file attachment, look at the contrast checker, you see it failed on previous versions, but now, you can see it passes with the contrast change, so that's nice. 

And you'll see contrast changes a little bit throughout the system to improve it, as well as on component search pages and prompt look-up pages. So one example was when you were turned with no search results, so go and scroll down. Sorry for the nausea, watching screen scrolling down too quickly. I'm trying to go slow here. 

So if you were to search on a page here and you were to get no matching search values found when you're entering your search, that wasn't being read out. There was no results there. You just were left wondering what happened, and now, that gets read out. So that's a nice improvement, as well as the context of the multiple rows delivered by the search results is being announced by Screen Reader, and that wasn't present before. 

So here's another scenario. And then the button header purpose, so the changes were made to the grid button headers, indicate the purpose sort, so I'll show you what that looks like. So this is the Holiday Schedule pages as an example. So the Grid Header buttons, these pieces here are the Holiday Description and Work Hours, Holiday Type, Start Time, End Time, you could click to sort a row for those, and that wasn't being properly announced. 

And now, the focus goes there, and the Grid Header button is properly identified as the Sort button. So you can click that and have it sort by Description, Holiday Date, Number of Hours, all these options here. So that's a nice fix. And so there were changes made to what happens when you click the Escape button. 

So instead of refreshing the page and losing the focus-- so here, on this holiday details, if you were to go over this option here, and you're accessing the Grid Action menu, before, when you hit the Escape button on the Expanded Grid menu, the page refreshes, and the focus goes back to the top of the page. But now, when you hit Escape, it just closes the expanded Grid menu, and the focus stays on the Grid Menu item that you were at instead of doing a full refresh and kicking you back up to the top of the page. So that's nice improvement on how that works, as well as in the Screen Reader, when you're in Screen Reader mode in the Query Manager and Viewer. 

So on the page, there's a Search By Query Name, Begins With, and then in enter in what the query name begins with before selecting the search. When you read through that, the Screen Reader wasn't reading that Begins With piece, so you wouldn't know that that's what that box is meant to be filled in with, and now, it properly reads that information, so you're going to have a better time with queries as well. 

MONICA: Those are some really great improvements. Thank you for the preview. 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Yeah, so we're going to add a couple more things. We had a whole list of bug fixes from Oracle that didn't have enough replication information on to be able to report out on what changed. We got a little more information there, so we're updating that, now that we got some update information, and we'll get that posted prior to when it goes live. 

So are there any questions? 

AUDIENCE: Hello. This is Tristan from Yakima Valley Community College. Can you hear me? 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Yes, we can. 

AUDIENCE: OK, so a couple of questions. First of all, on that last-- one of the things you were mentioning a minute or two ago, you were talking about when you activate an Escape button, you said also work if I just hit the Escape key on my keyboard to close that dialog? 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Yes, exactly. That's exactly what it is. 

AUDIENCE: So next question, if I turn on Screen Reader mode, other than making all the pages more accessible, is it going to change any of my ways that I interact with ctcLink, like keyboard shortcuts, et cetera? Because I've been hesitant to turn that on. 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: You can always try on the new feature to turn it on for one session and give it a try. It shouldn't make any changes to the keyboard shortcuts you're used to using. 

AUDIENCE: I do have a couple more quick comment/questions I was hoping to bring up, if that's OK. So in the campus, the CS section, Campus Solution, when I go into enter or update a person, first of all, and you go to the-- I think it's Regional tab and then you have all the little checkboxes at the bottom, there's a checkbox in there that's labeled Disabled, and that is a very offensive label to have on a checkbox to indicate that a person has a disability. 

MONICA: I think I can speak to that a little bit, Tristan. This is Monica from the State Board. So there are two different kind of areas inside ctcLink, where-- and I'm mostly referring to our student population at this moment, not our employees who might indicate disability to their college's HR. But there are two different locations inside ctcLink, where a college employee, who is in the Disability Accommodation Office for Students would indicate that a student they're working with has some kind of disability. 

And those are pages located in the CSS pillar that are called accommodation data pages, and only approved people can access those pages to apply a record to a student that they might be providing services and accommodations to. And that checkbox you're referring to, I've had some conversation, it's been made aware around that checkbox as well, but I don't think it's currently being systematically used across our system as a record or tracking mechanism for students with disabilities, specifically who are indicating disability to their college offices and receiving services. 

My understanding is that each college's HR office still is maintaining their own process and record keeping around when employees are coming to them to indicate that they have a disability and may need to request accommodations, and I do not believe that that checkbox is being used in that scenario either. So that is my current understanding that I don't think our system, SBCTC, has an approach across the system around that particular checkbox. Students do have some disability records inside ctcLink, but those are only managed by the accommodation professionals at the college, and then HR is managing the employee side. 

I don't think a request to have that checkbox removed will get us very far with Oracle. I think it's just a matter of us having a system-wide agreement of if or if we use that checkbox and why we would. But right now, I don't think we are. 

AUDIENCE: All right. So can I give a little more clarification on that? 

MONICA: Oh, absolutely. 

AUDIENCE: So first of all, I am a blind Screen Reader user, and I work in disability support services, so I provide accommodations to students. And so I have to go in and do coding for students in ctcLink, and we have to use that checkbox to indicate that students have a disability before we can go in at accommodations. And every time I have to go in and activate that checkbox, I hear the label Disabled, and I can't even-- it's involuntary, my hair just stands on end, because it's so offensive. 

And I'm not asking them to remove the checkbox. What I would ask is that they change the label. 

MONICA: I hear you. Thank you, Tristan, for that additional context. That's helpful. What I suggest at this point is if you're open to it, I'd like to reach out to you directly and set up a separate conversation around that checkbox, specifically, so that I can learn more about how you and your office is using it before I move forward with any conversation around the label with Oracle. 

AUDIENCE: OK. Yes, that's fine. The one other thing that I wanted to bring up is actually in the accommodations data page. And I guess the list of accommodations is my recommendation would be if the State Board and/or Oracle would allow individual colleges to upload the accommodations that they offer. Because the accommodations in the list are-- I mean, first of all, there's ones that are just don't apply to our office. But then there are ones that are either too broad or too specific, and it's very difficult to categorize all of our accommodations properly. 

MONICA: So Tristan, this is Monica again. Where you're going in this conversation is so appropriate for me to have with you, and I'm really glad to hear your comments and learn more about your position at your college. For the purposes of this open forum, I'm going to put a pin in your comment because, in this open forum, we are focused on the technical accessibility aspects of the ctcLink platform. And the conversation that you and I are going to have will be more appropriate one on one. 

And the final comment I'll say, I want to make sure I connect you with a group called the Disability Support Services Council, DSSC, if you haven't been already. Because that group, they have come to some standard agreements around how they use those pages that you're referring to, and I want to make sure that you and your office are linked in with those conversations if you haven't been already. 

So I'm so glad you're here today and that I don't think we've met before, so I'm really glad to hear your comments, and if it's OK with you, we'll put a pin in this conversation and continue on with our other technical updates, but I've written down your name to reach out to you. 

AUDIENCE: OK. I appreciate that. The final thing I wanted to mention, this one is more technical, is I appreciate that on a lot of these pages, there are keyboard shortcuts, especially for the Save feature, which is usually, Alt-1, and go back, which generally is Alt-2. What I was wondering is if we could have a keyboard shortcut for clearing the search form. 

MONICA: I'm writing down your comments. 

AUDIENCE: And the reason why I ask that is because sometimes, I need to go in and update accommodation info for multiple students. And when I can do everything with a series of keyboard shortcuts versus having to resort to the Tab key or something, it's just a lot faster and more efficient. 

MONICA: Yeah, I'm following your logic. Sounds like Josh might be unmuted. 

JOSH: Yes, this is Josh, SBCTC. Thank you for bringing that up, and thanks, Monica, for writing it down. In our quarterly conversations with Oracle, that's actually one of the topics of discussion that we have had for future update is the keyboard shortcuts. So in our next meeting, you can go ahead and bring that to them, and hopefully, they can incorporate that into their future update that incorporates more shortcuts. I think that was 860, if I'm remembering correctly, Christopher? 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: The next version of PeopleTools after [INAUDIBLE]. 

AUDIENCE: OK. Thank you. My hope is that they would make it fairly, I guess, sequentially intuitive so that right now, Alt-1 is save the page or the form that you're in. Alt-2 is to go back to the search, and then maybe Alt-3 could be clear it so that you can start a new search. 

MONICA: Thank you for bringing that up, Tristan. This is Monica. I've written down those comments, and I'll make sure they're emailed to Josh and Chris for that upcoming meeting with Oracle that I believe is happening after the PeopleTools update, is what I think I heard Chris just say. 

AUDIENCE: OK. Sounds good. And are you going to email me, Monica, or do I need to go email you for that other conversation? 

MONICA: I will email you, and I actually have another colleague on the call who is going to help me with that conversation as well. So all I need you to do, Tristan, if you are willing, is to put your email in the chat. You could put that in a private message to me or the general chat, either way, and I'll email you. 

AUDIENCE: I will work on trying to find that. 

MONICA: OK. No worries if you can't. I'll find you. 

AUDIENCE: OK. 

MONICA: OK. 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: OK, everybody. It's Christopher again. Thanks for all the questions. Certainly, be following up. The Enter Time page. 

MONICA: So I can share some of these updates, and then if I need to have Vickie maybe help provide any clarity, I know Vickie is on the call as well. But recently, Vickie Walton, who works at the State Board and does accessibility testing using different assistive technologies, looked up the Enter Time page. And this all started when we were originally working with another colleague, Padma, who added what's called a drop zone to help address the issue on those pages of someone selecting a job with the same name that may be confusing. 

In any case, so fast forward in Vickie's testing explorations, we found some problematic focused order and discrepancies between how someone using assistive technology, basically, their navigational experience of the elapsed time versus punch time pages, they're inconsistent, and that issue has been reported to Oracle, as well as an issue around focus landing on the Back button and that not being a very logical experience and causing some other issues that's also been reported to Oracle as well. 

And I think that's the main update from this page. Chris or Vickie, do you have any additions? 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Oh, go ahead. 

VICKIE WALTON: I was just going to say, if I recall right, those issues were accepted by Oracle, and they will be working on them. 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: That's correct, yeah. Sometimes that's half the battle getting them to agree that it's a problem, but this one went smoothly. We provided Oracle some good information, and yeah, they agreed it was a problem. So when you're on the Enter Time page and you select different job types that are elapsed time, the focus stays correctly, but when you're switching from a lapse time to punch time, focus jumps up to the wrong spot on the page and doesn't stay where it should. 

And the punch time is when you're entering time in, time out, lunch time, entering like you would like a punch card in the old style, but then the elapsed time is just where you worked eight hours that day, and [INAUDIBLE] time on each day and then you're submitting it. So that's what we're talking about. We're talking about lapse versus punch time. 

MONICA: Thank you for describing that. That was helpful Chris. I didn't do that. And whether it's a elapsed time or punch time page, is that selection happens, depending on how the type of job that's been selected. So that's what indicates how someone would be entering their time on those two different pages. 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Yep, I got it. 

MONICA: So that was some really good work and collaboration between our team and Chris's team, getting things documented and sent to Oracle and them accepting our service request ticket audit. So that's good. I think we can move on to the next slide, multiple jobs with same names. So Chris, do you want to take this slide? I know I wrote it, but-- 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Yeah, so we deployed a fix for the multiple jobs at the same name, and then in additional testing, that's where we discovered the switch at the focus issue with search [AUDIO OUT] jobs. So yeah, when you're on the Enter Time page, and if you have multiple jobs with the same job title, for example, adjunct instructor, you maybe teaching two, three, or four classes to help you figure out which job that's applying to, there's additional information put on the page, like who the supervisor is, what the hourly rate is, so you can help differentiate between those. 

MONICA: And that's a solution that one of our in-house developers added to that page to help make the selection clearer for people. And then recently, just last week when my team and Chris's team were in conversation, we learned that not too long ago, I think it was December or January, Oracle indicated agreement with its customers that had been saying, hey, this multiple job same name issue is a problem, meaning, the CTC system, our system is not the only group of customers that are experiencing this issue with multiple jobs, same name. 

And so recently, Oracle indicated agreement that, yes, they could see how this is a problem. It would be an issue and also, indicated that they're working on their own solution for this problem. So that's good news. For now, though, that's all the information we have, so we are going to maintain the changes that SBCTC made to those pages using the Drop Zone feature until we know more about what Oracle might be designing as their solution. 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: When we initially brought them the issue in the service request, they turned us down and said we should go vote on a feature, and that feature got enough votes. So yeah. So it was good. 

MONICA: Yep. 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: All right, Monica. 

MONICA: OK, Okta updates. So the first two bullet points on this page are review from updates regarding Okta and excessively testing I shared last month. I will review them again, so Vickie has done amazing work collaborating directly with one of Okta's product managers to do early accessibility conformance testing and evaluation of the new design for their signing widget, which has not been released yet. The date, I believe is still TBD when we're going to see that. 

Throughout that testing experience and then working with a student at one of our colleges who is a Screen Reader user, we happened upon an additional accessibility and usability issue related to Okta. It was not with their signing widget, but with their landing page that you find yourself in once you've logged in using Okta, and then depending on how many applications your institution is using Okta for, you have a list of options from the landing page that you could select it open to, go to ctcLink, for example, or somewhere else. 

And the issue that we found is, if the user was viewing that landing page using List View, the options available to you were coded as and presented to a Screen Reader as links in their Elements List. But if the user had selected Grid View, they were buttons. 

VICKIE WALTON: Monica, actually, it was the other way around. 

MONICA: Oh, other way around. So switch that. Sorry. 

VICKIE WALTON: That's OK. 

MONICA: And Vickie, do you want to continue this update, or do you want me to keep muddling my way through it? 

VICKIE WALTON: Well, I can. So I was in contact with the developer, and the first change they made was, they set both of them as buttons. And we had sent information to them from W3C that this is what a button does, and this is what a link does, but they just programmed them both as buttons. 

But then we wrote back to them and explained in a little bit more detail what the best practice was, and they have since changed both of them as links. So depending on whatever preference view you have, whether you're in List View or Grid View, you will be able to navigate using the Elements List or the Links List in JAWS, and they are now programmed, both as links, which makes much more sense and is best practice. 

MONICA: Absolutely. So thank you for-- 

VICKIE WALTON: And that update took place already, so it is now in active production. 

MONICA: Yeah. And that was just a really great, too, example of there was collaborations between Vickie and I and a student at our college and then conversations between the State Board and Okta and Okta responding really quickly to our feedback. And we wish all conversations on accessibility between the State Board and suppliers go that way. It's not always the case, but that was a success in our perspective. And so thank you, Vickie, for helping me explain that update. 

OK, this next slide, the Web/Accessibility Learning Lab. We've talked about this training program a couple of times in prior open forums. I don't want to take a lot of time away from ctcLink conversations. But I do want to share with you that we're two weeks away from that program coming to an end. It was a 10-week training program. We had seven teams across our system participating, including a team from the State Board, as well as Bellingham Tech, Lake Washington Technical Institute, Olympic College, Peninsula College, Renton Technical, SPSCC, and then the State Board. 

Right now, what these seven teams are working on is finalizing their written action plans, so taking the lessons learned from this training program and putting it into action. And each team will be expected to share a little bit about the action plan at the end of the program, but also, presenting those action plans back to institutional leadership for continued support around accessibility. 

And I know I'm biased because I helped develop this program and I'm facilitating it, but I do feel that it's been very successful and with a high level amount of engagement from all teams and just feeling really proud about the work that's coming out of this program. So thank you. 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: So the online emission application portal fixes, so it got deployed on March 11. I hadn't included a link to the Image Overview document that lists out the accessibility changes, and so I wanted to include that in the slide deck. So that's there for your viewing. I had shown it already in some previous forums. 

And the update on the Oracle Service Requests is we convinced them that focus issue was a problem, and they're working on developing a solution. So feel free to use our online submission form to meet your future meeting ideas. We'll be happy to chat about anything you submit, get them on the conversation for next time. 

And additional review as well. We have our ctcLink accessibility web page, and the link is in the slide deck as well. That's we post things like the Image Overview documents to show all the accessibility changes, as well as all the rest of the changes that are coming in different updates, as they come. And that's the end. 

MONICA: That's the end of our presentation of updates we had prepared to share with you today. Our next ctcLink accessibility open forum will be on Tuesday, May 9 from 11:00 to noon, same time, same place. As always, if you are out there and you've got a question, a comment or something before the next open forum, feel free to either use that submission form on the ctcLink Accessibility Web page, or you can reach out to Chris or me directly by email. That's fine too. 

Tristan, I got your email in the chat, so you'll be hearing from me in the near future for our conversation. Are there any other questions or comments for anyone on the call today? 

OK. Well, hopefully, this information was helpful to hear. Later on, if you have clarifying questions, feel free to reach out, but there was a lot of good information to share with you guys today. There's some accessibility improvements from PeopleTools, some continued testing and collaboration between my team and Chris's team, and just really grateful for that partnership there. 

And thank you, everyone, for being on the call today and being a part of this conversation. I think I'll go ahead and stop the recording and say goodbye. 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Thanks for coming, everybody. Have a nice morning.