IITAA Standards Workgroup Meeting Minutes - 11/7/2007

Participants

Meetings

Since our last teleconference, we had a face-to-face meeting in Springfield to review and update the Illinois Web Accessibility Standards 1.9. The latest version of the Implementation Guidelines for Web-Based Information and Applications (IWAS 1.9) that resulted from this meeting is posted at Implementation Guidelines is meeting focused on revising the standards pertaining to forms (section 10) and scripting (section 13).

Mike Scott, Patrick Beaird & IATP staff met with representative from Missouri, California, and Oklahoma in St Louis on October 25, 2007. The purpose of this meeting was to compile feedback on TEITAC's draft of the new Section 508 standards.

Revised drafts of the IITAA Standards and the Implementation Guidelines for Web-based Information and Applications have been posted on the Draft Standards page on the IITAA web site.

Remaining IWAS Issues to Resolve

Section 6 - Multimedia

Since captioning and audio description are resource intensive, we need to include some kind of priority levels in our requirements. Missouri (who created their standards five years ago) advises that we set achievable goals. Otherwise, in their experience, agencies and universities may ignore all the standards. We have asked the Illinois Deaf & Hard of Hearing Commission for their input and are waiting for a response. Currently we are using the Section 508 standard and requiring, but we need a way to define/prioritize what video needs captioned - maybe add that everything made available to the public (including live video) and anything that is required for employees. Our challenge is to define the potential scenarios and make some generally applicable standards. Perhaps use the wording "unrestricted public access" to clearly exclude classroom content, which is covered under Section 504.

We need to make sure we package the standards for instructor as well and remember that they are part of our audience.

Can we add something to the effect of: "If a multimedia presentation does not include significant video, then provide a text transcript." An example would be the Governor's State of the State address, which usually contains video of the Governor speaking. Text transcripts also are beneficial to people who want to enlarge text or have slow internet connections.

We need to make sure that the non-web multimedia standards are in sync with the web multimedia standards.

Section 15 - Downloadable Documents

We have revised these standards to say: Make documents natively accessible if possible and desired or provide an accessible HTML or text alternative.

Please email any additional wording suggestions or changes (for sections 6 or 15, or for any other part of the standards) to dhs.accessibility@illinois.gov.

Next Steps

We will schedule a meeting with the appropriate procurement staff from CMS's Bureau of Strategic Sourcing and Procurement explain the standards to them and answer any questions they have. We will bring their questions and feedback back to the workgroup for response.

The next IITAA Workgroup Teleconference will be held on Wednesday, November 21, 2007 at the Hay-Edwards Building, Room 325, 400 W Lawrence, Springfield from 1:30 PM to 4:00 PM. The teleconference number is 1-800-930-8829. The passcode is 9125949#. If you need a special accommodation, please email dhs.accessibility@illinois.gov.