October 2022 Meeting Minutes

Meeting Date
  • Guest: Phil Deaton
  • What is EIT Accessibility?
    • Making sure that technology and modes of communication are accessible to disabled people
    • Making sure technology has good accessibility features
  • Who is the Accessibility Team?
    • Group between Information and Technology Services and Equity, Civil Rights, and Title IX Office that works on IT accessibility 
    • How to get in contact with Accessibility Team
  • Strategies for providing IT/digital accessibility feedback to software creators
    • UM doesn’t always have the power to make these external software providers make changes, but we have been able to in the past
    • In determining which accessibility needs to address, many vendors consider how many requests they get (as opposed to the impact of specific requests)
      • Quantity may be more beneficial than quality
    • CfDC could help advocate for these changes
      • Ex. Zoom - lacks some accessibility features, including 
        • Zoom captioning in breakout rooms
        • Adjusting the font size on the names of meeting participants
        • Being able to change the shape of the closed captions box
        • Toggle off auto scrolling on the zoom transcript
      • Accessibility team and ITS have brought this up with zoom, but because it’s coming through as one person/group requesting each feature, zoom is less likely to make moves to change it
      • Zoom has a direct feedback link on their website
        • If the accessibility team creates a template, they can provide it to CfDC and we can each take time to fill out the zoom form
      • Discussion about CfDC participation
        • What would the letter look like?
          • Unclear at this point, CfDC could work with Phil to create this
        • Campaign success generally
          • Pros: lots of people can make change
          • Cons: accessibility features aren’t necessarily “nice,” they’re required - campaigns need to make sure to focus on the fact that accessibility is distinguished from things that are nice to have but not necessary
        • Some have seen zoom calls with transcripts in breakout rooms, and translation of captions (which was not super effective)
        • Some have filled out forms previously without success
          • Maybe accessibility team can create a pilot template for one concern to start with
  • CART / ASL suppliers
    • UM announced two new master agreements with optional suppliers for these services (University Translators and EPIC Translations)
      • These vendors were already contracted to do translation services, so because they provided ASL and CART, UM added these names
      • No requirement to use these suppliers; not clear what their quality is for ASL and CART
        • If anyone tells you that these are required, please cc Phil on the email and he is happy to advocate for using whoever you want
    • CfDC uses Screenline (and Letty Fox)
    • Discussion
      • List of CART and ASL vendors 
        • This list is not proprietary; it’s crowdsourced based on personal experiences - feel free to share widely!
  • General Discussion
    • Is there a similar accessibility team for HITS?
      • Phil is not sure, but would be helpful 
    • Has ITS thought about external software use for the breakout rooms captioning?
      • Some people use Otter.AI
      • Google slides and powerpoint also have captioning capabilities which can be used in breakout rooms
    • Would like to have more of a discussion on individual units-how to get started (things even like IT inventory)
      • How does a group new to IT inventorying establish a process like the SPG?
      • An SPG is a university wide policy, so it’s hard to make it nuanced enough to apply to each unit precisely (and hard to monitor each unit’s compliance)
      • Two ideas
        • Getting together groups of people who use technology in a variety of ways to brainstorm best practices, share ideas
        • Outline different technology and content that each individual has an impact on 
    • ITS is working on a marketing campaign for promoting the SPG and promoting disability justice
      • If anyone is interested in reviewing and providing feedback, please email Jane at [email protected]
  • Announcements
    • Neubacher Award Ceremony, November 4th, 1pm (virtual)
      • Announcing and promoting the honorable mentions leading up to the event - check out social media in the coming weeks!

Towards an Anti-Ableist Academy starting October 20