Friday, January 28, 2011

The Federal Rulemaking Process

AccessibleWeb@U Meeting — January 27, 2011
  • Rolf Johnson
    • Assistant Attorney General in the UW Division of the Attorney General's Office (http://uw.edu/admin/ago/) - Guest Speaker
  • Web Accessibility & The Proposed New DOJ Regulations: The Federal Rulemaking Process
    • Presentation available at http://uw.edu/accessibility/accessibleweb/rolfbj_rule_process.pdf
    • Summary
      • Positive law heirarchy
        • Constitutions
          • Written at broad level of abstraction
        • Statutes
          • Also written at broad level
          • May give agency specific authorities
            • DOJ is elaborating on what the ADA means and how it works
            • In this case Department of Justice has authority to make rules
        • Regulations
          • Legislative - implementing statutes
          • Non-legislative - guidance
            • State how laws will be interpreted
            • Policy statements - how the agency intends to exercise its discretionaly authority
          • Management and procedural
        • Legistative rules require Administrative Procedures Act (APA) process
          • These rules often called regulations
      • APA process generally
        • APA rulemaking also called "informal" or "notice-and-comment" rulemaking
        • Basic APA rulemaking rpcoess
          • NPRM - Notice of Proposed Rulemaking
        • Other Procedures
          • ANPRM - Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking
          • SNPRM - Supplemental Notice of Proposed Rulemaking
          • IFR - Interim Final Rule
      • ADA Design Standards Revision
        • General physical and architectural standards were updated first
        • Timeline
          • Sept. 30, 2004 - ANRPM published
          • June 17, 2008 - NPRM published
          • September 15, 2010 - final rule published
      • Proposed Web Accessibility Rules
        • Results of comments received during ADA design standards
          • June 26, 2010 - ANPRM published
          • Nov - Jan 2010/11 - Three hearings held
          • Jan 24 2011 - ANPRM comment period closed
          • Jan 2012 - NPRM to be published
            • Typically comment period is 60-90 days
          • ??? - NPRM comment period closes
            • Nothing dictates that rules must be issued on any fixed timeline
          • ??? - final rule published
            • Maybe sometime in mid-2013
            • 6 months later - New rule goes into effect for new pages
            • Two years later - Rules go into effect for old pages and sites
  • Discussion
    • Interesting aspects of the ANPRM
      • Rules will apply to the UW both through ADA Title II in that we are a state entity and through Title III in that we are a public accomodation
      • Limitations of responsiblity
        • Not responsible for content posted or uploaded to site by persons outside or your control
        • Do not cover informal or occasional trading, selling or bartering, but would cover larger commercial enterprises
        • Not responsible for accessibility of sites that are linked to, but would be responsible if using the services on those sites are required to successfully use your site
          • Credit card transitions are often done by external services - are the service providers you are using accessible?
      • Final rules are not likely to be in place before mid-2013, possibly later than that
        • Once they are in place, there will be additional time to bring your sites into compliance
        • DOJ does not have to follow a fixed timeline. They may decide that the proposed rules are not practical and not release any rules.
    • Enforcement
      • Complaint based
      • Proactive enforcement not likely for a while
    • DOJ already assumes we are covered by ADA requirements under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act
    • Cloud services
      • To the extent we use cloud services to provide services, we become responsible for whether the cloud service is accessible
      • Typically we deal with accessibility, security, and privacy of cloud services through contracts
      • Language about accessibility should be in any contract we have
        • Including indemnification clause
        • Examples of language that should be in procurement contracts can be found at http://www.washington.edu/accessibility/procurement.html
    • It is up to us how strongly we work for accessibility, at least at the moment
      • The ADA already applies to us through Section 504
      • National Federal for the Blind is trying to build up case law relating to accessibility in higher education
      • Expectation of accessibility is a rising tide, more and more people thinking about it
        • It is a dormant liability out there we need to be aware of
        • How big is the danger?
          • Bad publicity
          • Lawsuits
          • Not delivering a quality work or education experience
      • AG's office was pleased to see us looking into this topic, they like the proactive energy
    • Will standards apply to distance learning programs the UW offers?
      • There is no out, exceptions are rare, so yes, our distance learning programs are covered
      • Rules do not seem very granular in the details
    • The UW comes under Title II, public accomdation talk is about Title III
      • General saying "are you a public accomodation, if yes, then this applies to you"
    • Risk management
      • Taking steps to avoid possibilities of suits, enforcement actions, bad publicity
      • What is the risk before the rules are in place
        • Not a huge risk, certainly a rising one
      • Core question is "what will the standards be?"
        • In the ANPRM, DOJ seems to be basically asking "is this practical, will people really be able to do this stuff"
        • The current somewhat vague situation means we are less likely to be sued now than in the future when more specific rules are in place
        • Complying with all the WCAG 2 Level AAA is very difficult
          • Jim Thatcher recommends WCAG2 Level A
          • If there is uninimity on level A, we should do it now simply as good professional practice
      • When people come looking for information that might be used in a lawsuit
        • Worth thinking about how we respond to such requests
          • Might be good to view such inquiries as the equivalent to discovery events; pass the request on to appropriate authorities
    • What should our general strategy be?
      • Not good to be an outlier, more likely to be targeted
        • Our overall compliance should be as good as our peers
      • Enforcing standards only one method
        • May actually make us more vulnerable because we may be held to our own standards
      • Encourage accessible design as a basic part of professional competence
        • Be professionally proactive and bring our stuff into compliance with WCAG 2.0 Level A
          • See http://webaim.org/standards/wcag/checklist, look for the success criteria that say Level A
        • Encourage competition and cooperation among peers
      • Recognize that accessible design makes things work for everyone
        • Lowers costs and hassles for all customers
      • Need to watch for discontinuities and black holes in the processes we expect people to participate in; one missing link can prevent them from using a much larger system
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Friday, October 29, 2010

Using Superfish Menus in Drupal - Ray Ositis, iSchool

  • Looking Ahead: What Topics Could We Focus On In the Coming Year?
    • Menus
      • Seem to be a major puzzle area. How do you design a menu that works for mouse-users, voice browser users, speech recognition users, and keyboard only users?
    • Video accessibility
      • IBM's Pawan Khera is still interested in coming to the UW to talk about IBM's AbilityLab Media Captioner and Editor
      • 3Play Media (http://www.3playmedia.com/) offers some nice transcription and captioning services
      • How can we help make captioning a normal step in the workflow of video creation?
    • User testing for accessibility
      • iSchool as putting together a portable usability lab and would like to include accessibility as one of the things they test for
    • Other Higher Ed Web sites
      • How are we doing in comparison with our peers?
      • Terrill Thompson's study of the accessibility of higher education Web sites should become available on the Web in a few months
    • Central UW tool to check accessibilty and usability
      • SiteCheck being evaluated
      • Could AccessibleWeb@U help explain results and process?
  • Using the Superfish Menus in Drupal - Ryan Ositis, iSchool Web Administrator and Developer
    • iSchool site is at http://ischool.uw.edu/
    • iSchool needed to update their custom CMS
      • Wanted more and more features, hard to keep up
      • Decided in February it was time, partly in response to RBI initiative
    • Wanted a new CMS
      • Need something that will do everything they already had with their old system
      • What additional features can a new system provide?
      • Can our developers work with it with a minimum or retraining?
        • Drupal is built on PHP, which the iSchool Web staff was already familiar with
      • Drupal (http://drupal.org ) looked good
        • Strong, active community
        • Modular structure
        • Feature rich
        • Commitment to accessibility and security
      • Decided to go with Drupal
    • Superfish Menus Module (http://drupal.org/project/superfish)
      • Derived from Suckerfish menu originally published by Patrick Griffiths and Dan Web on A List Apart (http://www.alistapart.com/) in 2003
      • In working with Drupal modules, had already learned that, if you want a new feature, you should first go look for a module that already contains the feature, rather than trying to hack code.
      • Installation
        • Simple to install
        • Does not require any other modules
        • Unpack and copy folder into /sites/all modules folder
          • Versions available for Drupal 6 and Drupal 7
        • Run update.php (standard procedure for adding modules)
        • Go to modules menu, turn on Superfish menu
        • Configure menu
        • Go to Blocks menu to put the menu in a content block
          • You can have multiple menus, iSchool has a dozen different menus
          • For each Superfish menu, many configuration options are available - menu type (navbar, horizontal, vertical, mouse delay, drop shadows, etc.
        • Can control which pages a given menu appears on; useful for larger sites
      • Behavior
    • Pitfalls
      • Its a menu, not a panacea
      • Issues with jQuery plugin can impact module. Especially true with Internet Explorer and the z-index, but solutions are readily available in the Drupal community.
      • CSS for customizing can be tricky and takes time. Make sure to budget extra time for customizing
  • Discussion
    • Would be nice to have more controls, such as being able to navigate with arrow keys
      • Some screen reader software uses arrow keys, easy to step on toes
      • Code to make it work with arrow keys can break
    • Top level of menu items are all h4s, which most screen readers can find and go directly to
    • Could define access keys (http://webaim.org/techniques/keyboard/accesskey ), but there are no real standards
      • How do you tell users what access keys are available
      • Whatever you set up is likely to conflict with keys assigned by software
    • Carousel on the iSchool home page(http://ischool.uw.edu/ )
      • Custom coded in jQuery, it is a version 1.0; the team still has many more ideas they want to implement
      • Want to make it more accessible; already can tab through news stories
      • Do provide an All Features link to a simple list of the news items; could be put in front of carousel in tab order
      • Carousels are in general a "weird accessibility gap"; none of the readily available versions do well
      • There is a need for cool things on home pages, but tend to be used for pictures and other stuff that does not have much value
        • Do people really use carousels? Apparently not much.
      • Some carousels are connected to direct actions (apply now, buy this)
    • iSchool site to a degree is experimental, always trying things
    • Statistics
      • Drupal has modules that will give you all sorts of statistics; search keywords, referrers, performance statistics, accesslogs
      • There is a Drupal module that hooks everything into Google Analytics, generating the proper code for each page
    • Relying on UW Groups service (https://wiki.cac.washington.edu/display/infra/Groups Service ) for who can do what on the Web site
    • Evaluating Accessibility
      • Have a couple of tools similar to W3C validator
        • Need to work on use of headings
    • Had Drupal Interest Group meeting in Fall; 40 people attended,
      • iSchool Web team wants to work with that group
      • Particularly interested in accessibility of Drupal sites
    • Adopting a CMS
      • Moving school onto a CMS is a huge shift in thinking
        • Old method is to have static page templates, give out copies
        • Have moved to a distributed authorship model; has changed workflow and roles for many groups
        • Content providers get a window they can put content into; more limited role, but creates accessible pages if set up right
    • For image management; one reason for going to Drupal is there were people who wanted to add images on the fly
  • Go Around
    • Global Health (http://depts.washington.edu/deptgh/index.php) is going to Drupal and WordPress
    • Interest in mobile designs
      • Can it help push sites to simple functionality?
        • Dylan Wilbanks reports that he has heard several talks by top Web designers recommending that all new Web sites should be built first to work with mobile devices, then secondarily for big screens.
      • What does mobile design mean?
        • What are the criteria of a site designed for mobile access?
        • Fully readable and navigable without zooming?
          • Seems to involve flex designs (designs built with relative sizing) to give mobile device greatest flexibility to display page
      • Are there guidelines to mobile design?
        • A lot of stuff out there is woefully out of date, particularly the stuff that recommends hacking out most of your content
        • Current smartphones have very good browsers, can easily display full pages; how readable the pages are depends on the site design.
          • Rigid designs (wide, fixed width, fixed font sizes) will require a lot of zooming and scrolling
      • How does Mobile design relate to accessible design?
        • Simple navigation and content organization
        • What else?
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