MONICA OLSSON: And we're recording now. Hi again. This is Monica from the State Board. Welcome to May edition of ctcLink Accessibility Open Forum. A few housekeeping items for you all. We do have a professional live caption in the room for us today. We were having a little bit of an issue with the APA token and Zoom, so there are two ways for you to view captioning in this meeting right now. 

I'm going to paste a link to the captioner stream text, which you can open and view her live captioning in that window that opens for you on your device, pasting that link right down to the chat. We'll do so a few more times as we go along, or you can follow along using Zoom's auto captioning feature which we have also turned on for this meeting, and you just need to navigate to the CC button on the bottom of your Zoom screen, and turn that on so you can see it. 

As always, we do record these meetings and we also welcome questions and comments throughout our presentation and materials that we have prepared for you, so feel free to use the hand raise feature, or just unmute yourself and state your name and speak up if you have a question or comment to share if you prefer to put it in the chat. Chris and I do our best to moderate the chat and answer comments from there as well. 

So again, just one more reminder, there's two ways to view captioning in this meeting this month. You can follow along using Zoom's auto captioning feature which is turned on now, or use the stream checks link in the chat, and you can watch the professional live captioning using that link. 

If you need help, feel free to private message me, and I will do my best to help you out. I think that's it for me. Chris, I'll turn it over to you now. 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Good morning. Welcome to May's edition of the ctcLink Accessibility Forum. I'm Christopher Soran, the application support manager. Thanks for attending our meeting. We'll get rolling into it. 

So we've got some updates on some recent changes in the system. You may have recognized all the changes come in when we launch PeopleTools on April 29. So we put in PeopleTools at 8.59, and there are some accessibility fixes in there. And there is the accessibility image overview document lingo which I post last time, and I'll post a link here this time as well. 

There's also a recording of the question and answer session that happened last week, including the link I posted the first 20 minutes are the accessibility updates, which is an overview of the document, and just talking through that, as well as that video is currently being captioned, we'll be made available on our YouTube channel, so as the captions are up, but we wanted to have at least something out there to start. 

And a couple of the changes from last time, so I had this slide up during the last meeting, but some additional changes that we added into the document, so the last two in this list, the hover color contrast ratios, we reviewed, those are greater than 3 to 1. 

So when you're hovering over like a tile on the home page, those are compliant, as well as the-- prior to the A5 upgrade so the home page tiles was listed as the H1, instead of the selected home page header, so it'll say employee self-service after you select that tile. That'll be the heading one on the page instead of just home page tiles. 

So it's a bit more descriptive and improved, and so those are the two additions that were added to the overview document from last time as well as all the other things that I listed out. And so did anybody have any questions or concerns or anything after some of the new changes coming to the system? 

MONICA OLSSON: Can you post the document again in the chat? 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Oh, yeah, certainly. 

MONICA OLSSON: This is Monica. I just wanted to say, voice out loud what I-- a comment I put in the chat around the PeopleTools 8.59 upgrade. So Chris mentioned that accessibility overview document, and then there's an additional just kind of general overview document that's not just accessibility focus, that is also on live on our website. So if you wanted to read both, you have access to that. 

I think the link that Chris is putting in the chat is the accessibility overview document, and the other thing I wanted to say is the link to the Q&A/8.59 line info session recording that Chris mentioned, I felt I was there I felt that it provided a really great overview of the accessibility changes and enhancements in 8.59. 

Padma presented that material, and I will-- once I've got the professional captions for that recording, I'll be kind of blasting that recording out more widely to make sure the Cato group and DSC folks have access to all those documents in that recording as well. So that was my comment in the chat, and I've said it now. 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Let's see. I see the question in the chat from Megan, did that presentation, or can you tell me if the 8.59 meeting walk, had a level like two single line, so that recording meeting doesn't specify what level achievement or lack thereof in that meeting. Certainly we're always pressuring Oracle to continue to make improvements. That maybe was just about list of all the improvements and changes in the system. 

MEGAN: OK, Thank you. 

JOSH: If I may add this is Josh from SBCTC, we've had meetings or open forums with Oracle in the past where they've showed where future PeopleTools is going to meet or not meet WCAG 2.0 and 2.1 criteria. So when we're not on 8.6, we just upgrade to 8.59, but in a, say about six months ago, they did a presentation on what's coming in 8.6 and 8.61, and how they would be accomplishing some of the goals to meet the new 2.1 requirements, and what's coming in 2.2, 3.0. 

MEGAN: Thanks, Josh. And so they're kind of through those live meetings, kind of sharing the wcag improvements they're making. Is that kind of what you're saying? 

JOSH: Yes, yes, they're going through how they may have not been meeting a requirement before, and how they're addressing that requirement. 

MEGAN: OK. Thank you. 

JOSH: And like one of those, this popped into the top of my head, was how the main content and how at first they were-- the button to go to Main content was going to the first, I guess, actionable item on the page instead of the actual back button, which is the first thing that should be in the tap order, and we kind of went back and forth with a couple other schools interjecting and saying that where the skip two main content should go, and we were able to provide our feedback and they took that back to development, so the productive conversations. 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Thanks, Josh. Yeah, I was curious since the new launches. Anybody got any reports from any students or staff on the new accessibility challenges in the system? We'd love to address what is going on. You're hearing anything? I'm going to need tickets in the system yet or gotten in reports myself yet, but I'd love to hear from this group if you're hearing anything. 

Sounds good. Yeah, feel free to tell me. If something comes up, I'd love to get it fixed. Seems like we just got some improvements coming in the system accessibility wise. So steady progress. Yeah, we'll keep pushing. 

So what we have here as well is some links to some documents here. So here we have the list of keyboard shortcuts. So Josh put together a nice list. 

MONICA OLSSON: Chris we're seeing-- 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Yeah, it's loading slow. 

MONICA OLSSON: Yes, it's showing us the stream text captioning on your screen right now. 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: There we go. So what we have here is a document that lists out all the shortcuts in Windows and new shortcuts that came in on the Mac side of things, and some explanation as to whether it was new coming into PeopleTools 8.59 or not, so just put together this nice document because many of our users we know like keyboard shortcuts and list around. 

There's also lists of keyboard shortcuts from Oracle and the Oracle Support Docs just navigating with the keyboard. Well, the current one's doesn't tell you whether it's new or not. So that's what we made that other document to bring to the forefront there were some new changes coming in as well as in the CTC reference center. 

Here's a list of just all the keyboard shortcuts, which is kind of a duplicate of the Oracle one, but we want to have it listed everywhere, so it comes up when you're searching the reference center or if you're clicking links on the slides so you have access to all that. 

JOSH: And those-- and this is Josh. Must be CTC. The ctcLink reference center is currently missing the new Mac shortcut, so previously Mac didn't have shortcuts so, the CTC reference center just showed the Windows shortcut, so they'll be updating the reference center with all the new Mac shortcuts that have been put in place. 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Thanks, Josh for putting that together, and that's also linked on the CTC accessibility page. So it's something that we-- an issue we came across. We found in 8.59, it's not specifically accessibility, although certainly anybody navigating the system would have trouble with this piece. 

How you save a favorite and how you go back and access favorites, the favorites was a little more hidden in the menu, and it's a little more prominent now and the left side navigation after the PeopleTools upgrades, so people may be using it more with it being a little more visible, and so we just want to let everybody know if you're navigating around, some of the troubles we found. 

So if you're saving a favorite to like a subpage and navigation collection, and I'll go through-- I got some screenshots, explain the whole process. It's bringing you to the parent navigation connection of the page instead of that specific subpage you want to go to. So this is happening both in screen reader and non-screen reader mode. It's how things have always been, but we thought we'd let you know this is kind of what we're seeing here. 

If you're saving it on your mobile in the small form factor, the favorites are working fine. So we've reported this issue to Oracle, and they said that it's working as designed, and we told them we disagree. We think it's a bad design. We think it's a bug, not a feature. So we're still kind of going back and forth with them on that one. The latest is they want us to vote on an enhancement. So we'll see if we can get the votes together for them to fix it. 

But I'll show you what I'm talking about here through some screenshots of what I have here on the screen. For those individuals who can't see it, this is the class search and enroll page with some steps. So if you were to go from the CTC home page to the class search and role page, and you were to click the action or select the action option in the menu, and then hit Add to Favorites, the new favorite would then appear in your favorites. 

In the left side, it's kind of a docked navigation piece and when you click on it, it becomes more visible. And if you were to select it, it would bring you back up to that-- what I have here is a screenshot of the view my classes page, which is the first page in the list of incentive-- 

JOSH: Manage classes. 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: And we manage classes from the managed classes tile. So instead of bringing you to the class search and role page, is bringing into that top one. So it's not bringing to the specific subpage that you save. So we just thought we'd let people this kind of whether you're navigating around with or without a screen reader, that can be kind of confusing. 

So to give you a heads up on that. Any more you want to add, Josh. 

JOSH: Yeah, I just want to add, again, this is happening only on desktop. If you were to save your favorite while you're on mobile, you can access it in desktop and it would work fine as well. This is only happening when you're trying to save a favorite in desktop app currently, and we're, like Christopher said, I'm working with Oracle pushing back trying to get them to take this in as a bug because it's not even, as Christopher and I found other day, it's not even working as expected. 

So I got to go to our customized environment and show them that it's not even working as expected, that it's not taking us to that view my classes. It's actually taking us back to the student homepage page, and hopefully that will get it working a little bit quicker. 

MONICA OLSSON: Thank you, Josh, for working on that and getting that reported to them. 

JOSH: Yes, no problem. 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Which may be especially confusing. Screen users gone. I saved a page, why doesn't go into that page. What the heck's going on? Yeah, people use the class search. Like Megan said, people use the class search area a lot. It's pretty important place. So if you want-- and certainly just click into the class search, that all works just fine. Keep doing that. That's just a favorites piece. All right, Monica, go ahead. 

MONICA OLSSON: OK. So this screen Okta updates is more or less just a duplicate from the updates I shared at last month's open forum. The only new bullet point is the one at the very top that says there's going to be some continued review and accessibility testing of the Okta Verify app using VoiceOver on iPhone and Android TalkBack. 

And so that's something that Vicky Walton has already begun and is continuing their investigations and conversations with Okta, and we've reached out to partner a little bit with Josh Giha on that review as well. So more information to come. And then the bullet points under that top one are our updates around accessibility, review, and testing related to Okta signing widget, et cetera, that I already talked about last month. 

So for example Vicky did extensive review on their new sign and widget design, we've documented and had multiple conversations with Okta staff, help them resolve an issue around buttons versus links on the landing page that was back in February and March. So that all work-- that work has been completed and now Vicky is doing some focused review on the Okta Verify app. That's it for me on this slide, Chris. 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Awesome. Thank you. 

MONICA OLSSON: And then this slide is me again, this is just a brief update around the Web Accessibility Learning Lab that was the 10 week intensive training program that I collaborated to deliver to seven different teams across our system with Keto. And that program ended April 20th. I think it was a very successful program. There's always room for improvement and lessons learned. 

Ultimately each team completed a written action plan that they're responsible for not only sharing and turning in with the program facilitators, but also their own agency and college leadership. And so one thing that I'm working on right now is completing an executive report and presentation around the successes of the WA Lab that I'll be sharing with STAC, that's Strategic Technology Advisory Committee, and hopefully also the technology subcommittee of the president's group, so WA tech. 

And the reason for this report and presentations is to highlight the good work that these seven teams did during the training program, and also to make the argument that this program needs to be offered once a year to future teams and to seek investment for that and commitment for that training. So that's my WA Lab update. 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Thanks for sharing. And besides the one service request that we mentioned earlier which we haven't heard any new additional updates, certainly still have some open that development are working on, and all those statuses are being [INAUDIBLE]. 

Please feel free to submit ideas for future meetings through our online form. We'll follow up, get those added in, get them discussed and those topics for the next forum. As always, we have our CTC accessibility page where we have all the imagery documents like we mentioned earlier, as well as a glossary of terms for all the acronyms. 

MONICA OLSSON: Yeah, so this is where you want to go Megan and others who were interested in grabbing those overview documents and chat. If you miss them in chat, those documents are here, so you might want to bookmark that page as a resource. And then once I've got the captions secured for the Q&A info session recording, I'll link to that recording on this page as well, so it's all in one location for folks to review around 8.59 upgrade details. 

And our next open forum will be June 13, same time 11:00 to noon same place, this Zoom link. So are there any questions or comments? 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: See Natalie had a question in the chat about which what's the best browser, the specific browser, and Oracle has a list of all the supported browsers. Yeah, we tend to find this a better experience using the JAWS screen reader tool, certainly NVDA works as well. 

In the past, we've reported some issues to Oracle that we've experienced using the NVDA tool, and they've said it's NVDA's problem. And so we've shifted the way we report things to work, noting about how this violates a specific WCAG rule as opposed to just saying the experience we had using a specific tool. So we've made a little more progress that way. 

JOSH: Yeah, and if I may add to that, this is Josh from SBCTC. Actually on to do list for Vicki and I do some testing on what provides the best user experience specifically with students enrolling for classes, but I will also bop around to the other various areas while I'm doing testing to see which provides-- which I guess combination provides the best experience we've had, many updates and added products since we first went live. 

We've added Okta which is the single sign on piece, and we want to make sure that provides a good user experience with screen readers. And so we're just going to go through and see whether it's HCX, and test the different browsers with HCX as well as the Vanilla PeopleSoft against the different browsers as well. 

And three browsers that will be testing against are Safari for Mac and iOS, and Chrome and Firefox. And I think that answers to your question. 

MONICA OLSSON: Thanks, Josh. And I'm glad you mentioned some of the additional testing work you'll be doing with Vicky, and I think that work will be-- may take more time than what we have between this open forum and the next open forum, so I don't want to set an expectation up that we'll be able to provide all of the requested updates at next open form, but I do think we'll have more information to share by June's meeting in terms of what those exercises are revealing, including the work that he's going to do with the Okta Verify app. 

CHRISTOPHER SORAN: We appreciate all of you coming today. Thanks for your time. I know you're very busy. Well, keep at it. 

MONICA OLSSON: Yeah, so it doesn't look like there's any additional comments or questions that we need to address, which is fine, so we'll go-- I'll go ahead and stop the recording now and.