NOAH PEARSON: Thank you all again for joining today's session, "GMU's Assistive Technology Initiative-- The Highs, Lows and I Don't Knows of our ADA Title II Efforts." My name is Noah Pearson, I use he/him pronouns, and I'm on the marketing team here at 3Play Media.
And I will be moderating today's webinar. And with all of that taken care of, I'd like to welcome today's speakers. We have Korey Singleton, Kristine Neuber, and Robert Starr. Thank you all so much for being here today. We're excited to have you.
KOREY SINGLETON: Thanks, Noah. Thank you.
NOAH PEARSON: Amazing. Well, before we dive into today's session, would you mind each telling the audience a little bit about yourselves and your roles at George Mason? And Korey, if you could kick us off.
KOREY SINGLETON: Sure, I'll go ahead. My name is Korey Singleton. I am the deputy ADA coordinator for accessibility and manager of George Mason's Assistive Technology Initiative, and I've been with Mason for about 17 and 1/2 years now. So I'll kick it to Kristine.
KRISTINE NEUBER: Hi, I'm Kristine Neuber, and I'm the IT accessibility coordinator at George Mason, so basically looking at websites and applications. I have been at George Mason for about 26 years now.
ROBERT STARR: And I'm Robert. I'm the accessible media coordinator. I've been at Mason for eight years now.
NOAH PEARSON: Awesome. Well, again, thank you all so much for joining us. We are super excited to have you. And I'll start with our questions here. This first one's for Korey. When you first heard about the ADA Title II update, what was your initial reaction? Was it excitement, stress, or something in between? And what were your next steps after that?
KOREY SINGLETON: [CHUCKLES] Definitely somewhere in between. We had a little bit of freak out, because it's like, oh my God, people are going-- how do we get people to listen and focus on what we've been doing? But also, how do we get people involved with what needs to be done? And so one of the things we were also considering is like, what do we need from leadership?
So all of those things come into the fray. You're sitting there thinking about all the stuff you've been doing over the years and all the things you've been trying to do to get people to listen. And now there's an opportunity to ride the wave of ADA Title II updates and get them to listen. And it's like, oh my God, now they're going to be listening. [CHUCKLES] So what do I say? What do I say or what do I get them to pay attention to? So there was a lot of next steps.
So I think the first thing we thought about was messaging. How do we create a message that we can get the community to buy into, make it streamlined and succinct so that it's easy for people to understand what we're asking them to do. And so the first thing that I thought of and that we all got behind was building a website that was kind of a main resource for all of our messaging efforts.
And I'll give some credit to our folks who led the transition from Blackboard to Canvas because they did a similar thing, where they had a web presence outlining the timeline and everything that they were doing to move people from Blackboard to Canvas-- all the different workshops, resources, and all that stuff. And it seemed like a perfect thing to piggyback on for what we were trying to do for ADA Title II.
NOAH PEARSON: Yeah, that's great. I actually had a chance to look at that website before this webinar. And it really is amazing what you've done, and the way you've laid it out is great to see. A follow-up question to that, Korey-- can you tell us about the Digital Content Accessibility Action Plan and walk us through the process of how you developed that?
KOREY SINGLETON: Sure. So I'll post a link to it in the chat. Never mind. It's already been posted. Thank you, Casey. So what it is--
NOAH PEARSON: She's on it.
KOREY SINGLETON: [CHUCKLES] She definitely is. So what we wanted to do was create a resource where we were pretty much telling people, this is what's required. This is what the changes will look like. This is what we're asking you to do. This is the timeline we're asking you to do it in. And then here are some resources to help you with moving in that direction.
So any time we make updates or changes to what the plan is, we will update the website. People are aware of it. It doesn't necessarily mean that everybody in the campus community is aware of it, but it is a place for them to go and say, what are we supposed to be doing? We don't necessarily have to go and have face-to-face conversations all the time about these things.
The other nice thing about the website, it is a place for leadership to go if they have questions about what we're doing with respect to ADA Title II, because that's come up at times. Hey, what are we doing about that? And then you can point them to a website. They can see all of the different things and resources. So it looks like a very cohesive strategy. And I say that, but-- it is a cohesive strategy, but we try to make it look like one as well, in terms of the messaging, too.
NOAH PEARSON: Amazing.
KOREY SINGLETON: But that's kind of everything that's a part of it. I'm sure we'll talk more about it as we go through.
NOAH PEARSON: Absolutely. Thank you. Next question here is for Robert. How did you decide what success metrics and milestones to include, and how did GMU decide which units or departments to include first in the audit phase?
ROBERT STARR: Yeah, so when we first heard about it, we sat down together as a department and we decided that we would be the guinea pigs and we would pilot it on ourselves. [CHUCKLES]
So we initially looked at our website, looked at all the resources, our trainings, gathered everything that we had. And then we kind of pieced together an audit of sorts. We melded everything together that we had-- we looked at all the data that we took from some of the tools that we use to look at our website-- look at the documents and videos and supplemental applications.
And then that took on a new form of life. And we refined it from there as we went through several weeks of meeting together and going through that process to determine what works, what doesn't for us. And then we utilized that as our starting point.
And then we brought in our strategic partners, and we went through trainings with them on how to use some of the tools and how to go through an audit, what to look at-- utilize those tools to find that data-- comb through, what do you really need? What do you want to get rid of? What do you want to keep?
And then, as we were also in that transition from Blackboard to Canvas, we decided that, well, we'll lay off of the faculty for the moment and we'll just solely focus on the website. And that will give us a good starting point for when we do come back for the course materials. Then we'll have a little better streamlined way to go about that.
And then from there, we emphasize using those tools and platforms-- such as Microsoft 365, Adobe Acrobat Pro for documents-- utilize those checkers to look at your documents for accessibility. Leverage Panorama, which is the software that we have that looks at accessibility in our Canvas courses. Utilize DubBot, which is the accessibility checker for websites.
And use all that data to identify your accessibility issues with your documents, with your website, with your videos. And then create that plan from there moving forward on how to-- what is it that you really need? What do you need to fix? And move from there.
NOAH PEARSON: Awesome. I love that. Thank you, Robert. Next question here is for Kristine. What accountability mechanisms are in place to ensure units follow through on remediation planning and remediation itself?
KRISTINE NEUBER: Yeah. Listening to Robert just made me think of something about when we were asking people to look through what they have as far as resources and get rid of some of them and get rid of what you don't want. That was something that was a plus for getting people involved, because they were like, oh, well, maybe this is a way for us to get rid of what we don't need. So I think that was a selling point, doing that inventory, because you have to do an audit.
But as Robert mentioned, we have a lot of tools that we use, as well as those strategic partners. And I think you need both of them. So we need a set of-- if we want people to follow through, we need to give them the tools they need in order to be successful at that. So we have a group of tools that Robert did mention. I'll just go into a little bit more detail. And then we have those strategic partners, such as our instructional designers are some of our partners, the library folks, the branding and creative service people, Disability Services. All of those people are speaking the same language.
Like Korey said, one of the things that happened with this project is it got us to have the same kind of message out there for everybody. So wherever people are going, they're getting access to the same tools and the same language coming from everybody that's working with them. So I think that's part of the accountability. It's not just us saying you need to do this, but when they go to the instructional designers, they're saying it as well.
So the tools that we're using to go through the audit and look at just accountability is, like Robert said, DubBot is our tool that we use to evaluate websites. Right now, we have about 642 sites on the platform. That's basically all of the specific-- or the official GMU websites, as well as some others. After we looked at-- we put them all on there and then just looked at them all. What are we looking at?
We actually found that we needed to have a pretty high standard. So right now, we're at 90% that we're looking for for people to meet. And we actually have a pretty good head start on that. So right now, we review these quarterly. This is a project that's just getting started. And the units falling below 90% on their dashboard for accessibility will be contacted and given resources to help them fix those issues.
And like I said, that's a project that's just getting started. So we don't know yet how that follow-through will be. But again, we do have a lot of resources to provide to people. For documents, we're using Panorama, which is similar to Blackboard Ally, if that's something that you've used in the past. We've just moved to Canvas, and now we've decided to switch over to Panorama. After reviewing those documents and where they were as far as score, we agreed-- or decided to do 70% accessibility score as a starting point, trying to get everybody there.
And then for captioning of videos, we use Kaltura to host our videos on Canvas. That's automatically going to give the machine captioning, so it gets us to a really good point. At least there's some level of captioning on all videos that are hosted there.
Our partnership with Disability Services helps a lot in that, for course content, if-- or when a faculty member has a student who has a hearing impairment in their class, Disability Services will contact them to let them know and also prompt them to make sure that they have professional captioning on their videos that they're using. And that's something that the ATI provides-- that service to them.
And then for websites, as far as captioning, we are still working with departments to audit their videos. DubBot does help us to find where those videos are on websites. We have a policy set up to find those. But the departments themselves need to submit the videos for captioning through the ATI at this point.
KOREY SINGLETON: Can I add a couple of points to that, Kristine?
KRISTINE NEUBER: Yes, please.
KOREY SINGLETON: So one thing I will say is Kristine's being a little modest with some of the stuff she's been doing with her and Robert. So part of this effort has also been looking at the platforms to ensure the platforms are accessible themselves.
So not only the Canvas platform and what you're doing as far as new quizzes versus the classic and all that stuff when that transition happened. But Robert's has looked a lot at the video platforms that we have in place, which we know-- and largely, this is through DubBot.
DubBot was able to tell us that we are largely using YouTube, Vimeo. Actually, it's just YouTube and Vimeo on our websites. In our course sites, it's Kaltura, YouTube, and Vimeo. So that allows you to be a little bit more targeted with the training to figure out what specific issues might exist as it relates to accessibility on the academic side and accessibility on the website side.
And some of the other things Kristine has done in working with the university branding folks and with the ITS web administration folks is not only in making sure that our templates are accessible, so that you're really only looking at the content that's hosted on the website, and not so much the template itself, but you're also identifying which issues are specific to content that the unit has put up there on their own, or which things are specific to the template.
So that allows you to make broad, sweeping accessibility updates and changes when you identify those issues. And they put in a ticketing system that allows people to identify template-specific issues and then push those to those respective units to be corrected.
And so right now, the web effort's lasted-- the website effort Robert referenced as far as our timeline started in January 2025. Technically, the active part of it will start, I'll say-- will stop, really, around December 2025. But due to a lot of the work that Kristine has done in partnership with some of the folks that she's mentioned, 95% of our websites are above that 90% threshold.
So that's a pretty significant jump-- 95% of them-- I'm sorry, 95% of them are above 90%. About half of that, roughly about 45% to 50% of them, are above 95%. And so again, that allows you to be pretty targeted. And DubBot has allowed us to leverage that and identify who's managing those websites and all this kind of stuff, too.
NOAH PEARSON: Amazing. I think just having that data at all is quite an achievement, so that's great. Thank you for breaking that all down.
We have an attendee question here. Once identified and remediated, how are you verifying your remediation efforts are meeting the ADA Title II standards? Whoever wants to take this one.
KOREY SINGLETON: So once identified and remediating--
NOAH PEARSON: How do you verify-- yeah.
KOREY SINGLETON: So I would say that we're relying on-- so I would say if it's within the classroom, you're relying on Panorama and the scoring from Panorama to do that. If they're reaching out to our unit, that's Robert. Robert is the go-to person for document remediation and then ensuring that videos are captioned or audio described. And so that's part of that effort, too.
But you are leaning heavily on the tools. I think one thing that we try to keep in mind is that, while perfection is nice, we can't get to perfect. There's no tool that's out there that's totally perfect.
So we rely heavily on what DubBot gives us in terms of scoring. We rely heavily on what Panorama's giving us in terms of scoring. And that at least allows us to move in the right direction. But if our unit is putting eyes on it, then I would say we're able to verify that with the tools that we use to remediate and fix issues.
Now Robert, is there anything else I'm missing there?
NOAH PEARSON: No, that's perfect. One thing I will add is-- and this is probably more for Kristine, but when we look at the websites, we're looking at tens of thousands of pages worth of material. So having DubBot definitely helps streamline that process and helps us to identify the pages that are a bigger-- I guess in this case a risk for having accessibility issues. So leveraging those tools is really what helps us to target and be more concise with what we're doing.
KRISTINE NEUBER: And if I can add to that, as I mentioned, we're doing these reviews quarterly. That's what's just gotten started. And that is like the first quarter we're looking at where the accessibility issues-- where the websites that fall below 90%.
Those folks will be contacted to let them know that they need to do some work on their websites, will be given resources. We're just starting to build some videos that are specific to those issues and how to fix them that will be provided to them to fix. And then the next quarter, we're hoping to be able to see that improvement. So I think that that-- and if we're not seeing that improvement, we can go back in and find out where the roadblock might be.
NOAH PEARSON: Awesome. Well, thank you all for answering that attendee question. Next question I have here is for Korey. What factors drive the decision of whether remediation happens in house, ATI, versus outsourced?
KOREY SINGLETON: That's a good question. I would start first with workload. So Robert is the main point of contact as it relates to remediating documents and captioning any videos. And so if he can handle it on his own in house, which he handles a lot on his own, then it doesn't necessarily need to be outsourced.
If it ends up being a big job-- like we've had some units when the ADA Title II trainings on our end started, some units came with like 500, 600 documents that they wanted to get remediated. Obviously, if you can't handle that because we're processing technology-related accommodations for students, then those are the kinds of things that we'd look to outsource.
And for outsourcing, we've been able to leverage vendor contracts. So we're part of a group called VHEAP, which is Virginia Higher Education Accessibility Partners. And that is a collaboration of higher education institutions in the Commonwealth of Virginia, as well as state agencies and public entities. And we've collaborated over the years on cooperative purchasing agreements for captioning. That's why we have such a good relationship with 3Play, among others. And then also, we finished a cooperative purchasing contract for document remediation as well earlier this year. So we've leaned on those contracts to be able to help us for any kind of big jobs.
And so that's been helpful. But I think-- and we outsource everything captioning. At one point in time, we used to use students, and we'd try to do a lot manually, but-- and we've given some presentations like that over the years.
But there was just no way to keep up with the amount of content that was out there. And students obviously have their own academic priorities, and so it was just hard to make use of students in the long term. But costs have gone down. AI has taken over. So it's been a lot easier to leverage working with vendors in that way going forward.
NOAH PEARSON: Absolutely. Thanks, Korey. We have another attendee question here. It's a good one. How do you go about auditing the accuracy of your third-party vendors, for example, ensuring Kaltura is providing accurate and well-formatted captions? Robert, maybe you can share any processes that you have in place.
ROBERT STARR: Yeah, so we have two different routes for captioning. Anything that gets uploaded into Kaltura is automatically machine captioned. So everything will have a baseline caption to it. And then we focus more so on those videos that will be public facing, such as courses, or anything that will be public facing on some of our more prominent websites we'll provide professional captioning for.
So we rely more on those who are submitting the requests for captions to not necessarily review fully, but to take on part of that role. Because tens, hundreds of videos can come through, and I can't watch them all. [CHUCKLES]
So I do do a spot check on most videos as they come in for professional captioning. But anything that has been machined captioned, I don't generally look at. That's more so for either faculty or staff to look at and judge and make that judgment call on whether that needs to be upgraded to a professional captioning.
NOAH PEARSON: Awesome. Thank you, Robert. We've had a few attendee questions related to remediation and general requirements that we'll try to get through. First off, one attendee would like to know how you're tackling audio description for videos. Are you adding it? And if you are, how?
ROBERT STARR: Yes. Yes and no. [CHUCKLES] We are using audio descriptions more so where needed. So we target more so those courses that we know will have an individual who has a visual impairment. So we'll target those courses. And we are working with 3Play to leverage AI for audio descriptions for some of the more prominent website videos, so any promotional materials or materials that will be featured on the main website.
NOAH PEARSON: Awesome. Thank you. Another attendee asked if you have a university-wide caption vendor license, or is it mainly for students requesting an accommodation? Also, all are all videos hosted university-wide required to have ADA-compliant captions?
ROBERT STARR: Yes. So again, we leverage the captioning contracts through VHEAP, as Korey has talked about earlier. And in so doing, we-- again, everything has the baseline captioning through machine captioning if it's gone through Kaltura. And at any time, it can be upgraded to professional captions. So it doesn't have to be for accommodation. It can be for going onto the main website page. So it just-- anyone in the university, if they ask for it, we will provide it.
NOAH PEARSON: Awesome. Thank you. Lastly here for these attendee questions, someone shared that they are struggling with mandates to bring digital materials like institutional repositories into compliance, especially when considering the number of articles in their repository. Is there anyone who has solved this problem? Do institutional repositories of old PDFs meet the exception for archived content?
KOREY SINGLETON: I guess I'll take--
NOAH PEARSON: If you got all that. [CHUCKLES] Thanks, Korey.
KOREY SINGLETON: So yeah, I think-- so let me make sure-- I'm trying to read it in the chat. Is it in the chat or in the Q&A? That was a mouthful. OK.
So one of the things we're doing with the libraries-- Kristine, you might want to talk about this, actually.
KRISTINE NEUBER: Yeah, I wasn't sure if it was like documents in general or-- yeah, if we're talking about library.
KOREY SINGLETON: Yeah, I missed the library piece. Yeah, yeah.
KRISTINE NEUBER: Yeah. So for library databases, it's a huge challenge. So what we have tried to do with the-- or are working with the library on is that they give us every year their top 25 databases that are accessed so that we can see where we need to focus our efforts. And then we can do a review of those sites or those resources to see the level of accessibility and determine whether we need to contact them, or develop, more likely, a plan at the university to deal with students who can't access them.
So right now, with our students who are visually impaired or use a screen reader, we often have them make an appointment with a research librarian to get them started-- to pull some documents or some resource articles that way as an alternative access plan if they can't access it. But as far as reviewing all of those resources, we're looking at the top 25 right now every year.
And as far as the-- what we have been able to do is sometimes add in contract language that we're trying to get every contract to have a clause that allows us to make those documents accessible if we need to, if we can't get them fast enough from the vendors themselves.
Because a lot of the vendors will say, if you contact us, we can do it within 48 hours. The problem is, by the time you contact and get a hold of somebody and they remediate it, then it's too much time for that student to be able to do their work, typically. So we're trying to get that contract language in.
NOAH PEARSON: Awesome. Well, thank you all for answering those attendee questions there. Next question I have-- what strategies have been most successful in training faculty, staff, or students on accessibility best practices? Robert or Kristine, if either of you want to take this one.
KRISTINE NEUBER: Robert, if you want to start with your DAF course, then I can follow.
ROBERT STARR: Yeah. So a couple of years ago, we developed a Document Accessibility Fundamentals course, which looks over primarily Word, PowerPoint, and PDF documents. And it's a very detail-oriented course that goes through making those documents accessible. It does touch on accessibility laws, and it does do an introduction to screen readers. So those who go through the course will be able to use a screen reader to test the document. And we've had great success with it.
We've had 38 faculty and staff complete the course, and we currently have 15 enrolled in the course. And that's been a great help for some of those departments who want to include accessibility but had nowhere to start. And so that was a good course to enroll in and get the basics of document accessibility. And then this also leveraged them to be accessibility advocates in their departments and for those around them. And it's been a great help with getting documents accessible across the campus.
KRISTINE NEUBER: And we also have a Trusted Tester for the Web self-guided course. But with this course, it's really designed for people who are web developers or content managers that are every day working on websites.
And it is a more intensive course because we are leveraging the training directly from the Department of Defense-- or I'm sorry, Department of Homeland Security. And they've got that developed, the Trusted Tester for the Web course. So we have our students-- or people that choose to take the course, we have them enroll in the Department of Homeland Security Trusted Tester training.
They go through it individually. However, we have weekly check-ins so they can jump on a call to get some assistance if they're getting stuck or they have any questions. And we hope that they get through the course. I also provide an additional training in addition to the Trusted Tester, which is specifically how to test a website with ANDI, A-N-D-I, which is a web-based testing tool, a free one, and then also testing with a screen reader.
So you learn how to find issues with a screen reader, which obviously are going to find things more than just what DubBot can catch. So those two kind of individual trainings are added to being able to go through the Department of Homeland Security training. And then they also get a stipend of $250 for successfully completing both the Document Accessibility as well as the Trusted Tester. We've had 19 people complete the Trusted Tester Fundamentals course. I know Robert's had a lot more, I think, who finished the document course.
But the key thing-- this has been a great effort because we have been successful in getting all of the key web developers through the course, or least participate in the course. Most of them have completed it, and it's made a humongous difference as far as people being able to catch things that-- more people out there with their eyes open and catching accessibility issues.
And, like Korey mentioned earlier, our templates are accessible. And I think a large reason for that is because they've been through that training, which is very detailed-- going through every single one of the WCAG standards. That's probably been our most successful training effort.
KOREY SINGLETON: Can I add to that, Noah?
NOAH PEARSON: Oh, absolutely.
KOREY SINGLETON: One thing-- sorry about that, Robert. One thing I will say is that we've tried to focus on training the right people, not necessarily all people. And so if you have people who operate at specific areas, they oversee platforms that have an outsized impact on the university community or outsized impact on their respective departments-- or OUB that has a creative services team that provides a lot of publications, publishes reports and different things for academic units.
A lot of their folks have participated in the training. That way, the reports and everything that they're creating tend to be more accessible than they used to be. So we try to-- we'll train anybody who wants to come through. But what we really try to do is train the right people so that they can impact broadly the resources that are shared amongst the community.
KRISTINE NEUBER: And we also found-- Korey and I did-- research the first time we ran the Trusted Tester training. And we did find that that $250 stipend mattered. They pushed them through to finish. So I think any kind of incentive you can provide for completing training can be helpful.
NOAH PEARSON: Yeah, that's great. I love that tip. [CHUCKLES] We have another attendee question here. Can you speak to how you secured leadership buy-in to help support your efforts? What is culture at George Mason like as it relates to accessibility prior to the Title II update?
KOREY SINGLETON: I don't think the culture at Mason is much different than any other institution for the most part. Well, I say that with some caveats. What I will say is that we've been doing it for a long time. I actually took over for Kristine back in 2008.
So Mason has been supportive of accessibility efforts for a long time. Doesn't mean faculty members were paying attention to anything we were trying to do or to try and get them to do, but we at least had a team of folks to message. I will say what has been useful is having stories. So when there is an issue around a student, everybody will marshal all their resources to help if there's a student access issue. And those are times when you can ride the wave to making bigger, more impactful changes.
And that's what I've done as far as securing leadership buy-in. I learned early on from one of our previous VPs, maybe like three VPs ago, that when there's an issue and you need help, come in and tell them what you need. Tell them what the issue is and what you need, but you don't have to give a one-hour presentation. Just-- you got 10 to 15 minutes. Tell them what you need from them to be able to move the ball forward. Doesn't necessarily mean that they want to know the issue in depth.
Typically what it is is they will point you to an individual that they supervise, who then needs to carry the ball forward. But messaging-- and that's kind of what-- I'll go back to where we started with this whole effort. Messaging is a big part of it. I'll share a couple of links as well once I get done.
We created a document called "Tops Tips for Making Your Academic Course Accessible," "Top Tips for Making Your Websites Accessible." And it was more so just to provide a streamlined way for those that we are trying to get to buy in to do what we need them to do. I shared those things. I'm on an instructional continuity working group, which is a lot of people who are in the upper level of academic leadership around the campus community.
And it's not that I have much to say in most of the meetings, but every now and then, I will share what's going on. They had me do a training around ADA Title II so that they understood. And because we had a website and because we had resources, I could immediately point them to things while they were paying attention and then get them to push that message forward. I think sometimes the challenge in the past we had is that I didn't have anything to support the message outside of a PowerPoint that I prepared for that training.
And so when you had their attention, you were left with a PowerPoint and no other kind of infrastructure for them to take the message forward for you. So having that message and being ready when you get an opportunity to get people to buy in has been helpful.
NOAH PEARSON: That's great. It feels like a common theme here has been just having a one unified message. So I feel like that in itself is a great takeaway. Another attendee question here, kind of going back to training-- did you make any accessibility training required for employees at the university?
KOREY SINGLETON: [CHUCKLES] Sorry, I'm laughing at "required," but go ahead. No, we can't require anybody-- no more so than anybody else on this call. Our paychecks are not big enough to require anybody to do anything.
[LAUGHTER]
But what we try to do-- we have a couple of groups-- we have one group, it's called the Digital Accessibility-- what is it? DAIC, Digital Accessibility and Inclusion Community Group. All these acronyms are in my head. But the DAIC group meets once per semester. It's really just people who are interested in accessibility. We'll host a meeting. We will talk about all the different things we're trying to do around accessibility.
Strategic partners from the different areas will usually come in and just hear what's going on. Sometimes it may involve them if they've been working with us on some efforts. But it's a once-in-the-semester update, really.
Beyond that, we will send out newsletters as well once per semester to just highlight what's going on, too. That is how we try to get people to participate in trainings. That is how we try to make them aware of the different things that we're doing. And again, it really does help you to hone your message.
We just started off randomly doing this. And the people who became a part of that mailing list were people who had come to us for one reason or another for services, because we had a student issue in common, because we had a meeting in common, or something like that.
And that's how we built our group, because those are people who are interested, for one reason or another, in accessibility. That list is 700-plus people strong across the community. And we get analytics on who opens it, who doesn't, who clicks through it. I can tell you 50% of the people actually open the email. Like 5% of them actually click through it. So it's not even really that they're all paying attention. But at times, you will get the right people paying attention and helping to drive the message forward.
KRISTINE NEUBER: And we can also-- on our website, you can request an individual training if you want it.
NOAH PEARSON: That's great. I love that. Thank you. Next question here I have is for Kristine. What role has procurement and vendor accountability played in this process?
KRISTINE NEUBER: So much of my day is dealing with procurement. [CHUCKLES] The procurement plays a key role because obviously, what people decide to purchase for the university needs to be accessible. And it is probably one of the biggest challenges, too, because so many vendors, so much software is not yet accessible. I always say if we required 100% compliance with WCAG, we wouldn't have any software to use.
NOAH PEARSON: [CHUCKLES]
KRISTINE NEUBER: But the procurement process can really help. The way that we manage it at Mason is we have something that's called the Architectural Standards Review Board. And every software program, or any applications that are going to be purchased, before they can be purchased they have to have gone through the ASRB. And so the ASRB includes people-- it's includes accessibility, but it also includes things like security reviews, making sure that it can integrate with what we already have, making sure there's resources to manage it.
So we have an advantage in that every single thing that's purchased does get filtered through that process so that we can catch everything. And through that process, we have somebody from procurement in that meeting so that they're aware of what's coming through. They're also aware that the main purpose of this group is to assess risk.
So we can't make everything accessible. We can't force all of the vendors to be accessible. But we can look at risk. And so what happens is if it's high risk, those sometimes get rejected-- very, very rarely, especially just for accessibility. But if we know that it's a high risk, we have different contract language that can help us deal with that.
So for example, if we have a broad software program that's going to be used by all students and faculty, and it's been reviewed-- so it gets reviewed by me through the process-- and find that it's high risk, that there's a lot of issues, then we meet with that vendor. We have contract language that says we need an accessibility timeline when you're going to fix these big issues. And then we also can set up meetings with that vendor at the time of purchase to meet those dates when they say they're going to be meeting that timeline.
So doing that right at the beginning really helps to follow through on the accessibility issues, especially for the big major software programs. For smaller things, like classroom technologies, we again assess the risk. We're aware that it exists and can hopefully prepare for alternative access plans as needed. But yeah, procurement is really where you're getting that accessibility language in.
NOAH PEARSON: Yeah, awesome. Thank you Kristine. Another attendee question here. I've got a very active group. Can you speak to writing policy for digital accessibility? Can you share your policy? I'm curious about who owns the policy and what you decided to include in the policy. I feel like I said "policy" a million times just there. [CHUCKLES] But whoever wants to take that one.
KOREY SINGLETON: Yeah, so our policy was written some years ago. It basically includes-- we actually listed some of the language from one of the resolution agreements-- one of OCR's resolution agreements from some years ago. I want to say this was maybe Penn State-- taking some of the definitions that are in there, references to ADA Title II, and at the time, Section 508, because ADA Title II updates had not happened, of course.
But we wanted definitions in the policy to be able to define-- prior to that, we had had a lot of discussions with different units about what was covered, what wasn't covered. And so the reason we did the policy was to define what was covered, what was consistent with what OCR was putting out there.
And then also-- [CHUCKLES]. We were laughing about this yesterday. We have a clause in there that basically says, if we identify an issue, the cost of remediating those issues actually goes to the academic unit or to the unit specifically. And we laugh because nobody enforces that. Nobody enforces it. The cost ends up just getting shared across the institution in one way, shape, or form. But it was nice to put in there at the time.
And then there's also some supporting documentation. The links to the supporting documents-- like, you'll notice some policies out there where they have all of the procedures spelled out in the policy, written in the policy itself. We have links to those things. So we have links to the procedures, links to our website for other different resources that we've talked about today.
And the reason we have links in there is because we control those links, and we have the ability to update that information as needed. So if there are procedural changes, we have the ability to do those things without having to go to somebody to tell them what needs to be updated or changed and try to get approval and all that kind of stuff. We just tell them what we're doing, and that's what the policy links to. And so it's helpful to have supporting documentation.
For us, that was the best way forward. For other institutions, they may have it completely spelled out in the policy itself. Some good ones that I've always references-- I've looked at Stanford's before. I've looked at Harvard's before. I've looked at Penn State's.
And so sometimes I've looked at other ones, following behind what may have happened with a resolution agreement or something like that, because usually you knew they were paying attention. There was a lot of good information you might find. But there are a lot of good examples out there. I'm just referencing a few.
NOAH PEARSON: Awesome. Thank you for sharing that, Korey. So next question here-- how do you support faculty who are unsure how to make their materials accessible? Where have you seen the most resistance, and how have you worked through it? Korey or Robert, if either of you want to take this one.
KOREY SINGLETON: Robert, you want to take this one?
ROBERT STARR: Sure. Starting off with, we have a lot of faculty who are very supportive. And it's been a big help, especially those who have gone through the DAF course. And they can help guide some of the other faculty and staff that have questions about it. But those who have no clue about accessibility, don't know anything about it, we generally talk about how our office is here to support.
Utilize our services. Send us your documents. We'll review and we'll remediate as needed, and then we'll start from there, and we will provide trainings at that point. We also work really closely with our instructional designers, and all of them have-- well, most of them have gone through the DAF course or Trusted Tester. And they're a great resource when they're working with faculty and staff. And they always refer the faculty and staff to us as well.
We talk about how Word and PowerPoint are super easy to remediate because with using the built-in checkers through Microsoft, it really helps you step through those issues and make those changes pretty quickly. So most of them can do it on their own if they're paying attention enough.
But anything that has to do with PDFs, we tell them, ignore it, send it to us. We'll take care of it. [CHUCKLES] And we'll make sure that it's accessible. If they need help with their Word and PDF, of course we'll take a look at those as well. For some of our STEAM faculty, we have resources available. It can be difficult at times making some of their content accessible due to the nature of how they structure some of that content.
Korey recently was working with a faculty member from the math department to make some of their PowerPoints accessible when some of those equations are not-- the reading order does not work well with some of the structure that has been provided in those PowerPoints.
But again, utilizing training, helping them to get up to speed on what works well and what doesn't, helping those faculty get to that point is what we're trying to work toward. And we've had a lot of positive feedback on those trainings and working with them to get to that point.
NOAH PEARSON: Awesome. Thank you. Robert Cool. As we're getting towards the end of the session here, I'd love to just know from you all what has surprised you about implementing this plan so far? Has anything gone differently than expected?
KOREY SINGLETON: I guess I'll go first. The most surprising thing to me, I would say, has been the amount of buy-in. Like, our strategic partners have really bought in, especially the folks around the website stuff, our instructional designers. They've been really supportive of the effort and like, hey, tell us what to do. So that has been really positive.
I was also surprised by how much folks are reaching out to us about ADA Title II and us not necessarily having to go out to the community to mention anything. So those are two things that jump out to me right now.
NOAH PEARSON: Awesome. Robert and Kristine do you have anything that surprised you?
ROBERT STARR: Yeah. For those who've gone through the DAF course or Trusted Tester-- they have been great advocates for accessibility in their departments. And just the amount of effort that they put in to making their websites or their courses accessible has been really appreciated. And it's just been amazing to see how some of those individuals are rooting for accessibility, and they're pushing it forward.
NOAH PEARSON: Awesome. Kristine. I don't want to leave you out.
KRISTINE NEUBER: No, no, no, I think I just have seen the same things, and just really appreciate the buy-in.
NOAH PEARSON: Awesome. I love to hear that. Another question here, directed at Korey. What staffing, budget, or technical resources have been critical to launching and sustaining DCAAP?
KOREY SINGLETON: So the-- Robert and Kristine have referenced DubBot for websites, Panorama for the LMS. Acrobat Pro is available to everybody in the campus community. Microsoft 365 is available to everybody in the campus community. So we leverage those tools. And none of those came out of our budget. Those are all things that ITS either took the lead on-- or really just ITS took the lead on those things.
As it relates to our budget, we used to have a rolling $25,000 annual budget to support captioning and transcription and audio description. When COVID happened, there was a large push for money so that we could ramp up all of our courses to make them accessible at that time. And at that time, they increased that annual budget to about $75,000. That is specifically just for remediation efforts. Our VP now allows us to use it for not just the captioning, transcription, audio description, but also for document remediation as well.
The reason I have that budget is because for a long time, I was advocating for another full-time position, and that was a no, because that was going to cost more than what the budget actually is. I don't even know if they know they're giving us $75,000 a year to continue with these efforts, but I'm not going to tell them, and I'm just going to keep spending the money.
NOAH PEARSON: [CHUCKLES]
KOREY SINGLETON: But I think we've been able to leverage outsourcing and vendor partnerships as a fourth position-- fifth position in the office, if that makes sense. And so that has been really helpful because the vendors' costs have gone down. Services have been streamlined. That's been really helpful for us. And so we've really just tried to not have 10,000 different things out there. These are the four things we really want people to think about and use. And
I've seen there's been some questions about math. What I will say is one resource we have hosted on the DCAAP website is North Carolina's Virtual Learning Community. Darrin Evans, Joe Polizzotto, some other folks were instrumental in developing that resource. That has a lot of things about creating accessible math content.
The version that we have hosted I think is from 2021 or 2022. I know they're supposed to be presenting on the 2025 version of that documents. But that's helpful, too, because when STEM faculty come to us, we basically say, HTML-based, LaTeX, and drill that, drill that home and then try to provide some authoring tools to help them understand how to do that, whether it's Microsoft Equation Editor or whether it's using MathType or Mathpix or things like that. So I would say those are the main things that are out there.
NOAH PEARSON: Awesome. Thanks, Korey. We got time for one more question here. As we wrap up today's discussion, are there any other lows or "I don't knows" you might be anticipating as you continue to move forward with your compliance plan? Whoever wants to take it.
KOREY SINGLETON: The "I don't knows" is-- I'll say this. So there are a lot of-- I saw some questions about Instagram and Research Repository and a lot of things that I would say we've kind of left those on a shelf to address as needed, because we're not going to be able to figure out a plan for everything.
So for example, Kristine was talking about the library. We look at the top 25. Yeah, we can look at the 150th-used database on campus, but why spend a lot of time and resources on it when we can just say we're going to have a plan to be able to manage outsourcing?
We're going to have-- I'm sorry, manage document remediation-- or rather, outsource documents to get remediated, outsource captioning, transcription, audio description to be remediated. Those are backstops for things that we don't necessarily have an actual plan in place for.
And then, really, I think our goal really is that we have those backstops. We can offer that as a middle ground for working with faculty. Robert was talking about working with difficult faculty. When you say, hey, yeah, we can remediate those PDFs for you, people tend to be a little bit more responsive about what they can then take on. And so, hey, we need you to do X or Y, or hey, I can then-- let me loan you a MathType license to be able to do XYZ. I'll show you how to use it. Maybe you use this when you develop.
So having a budget to operate from and do things from allows you to meet some folks in the middle. And I realize not everybody can do that. But maybe it's something-- and that wasn't something that I'd always considered or thought about, too. But over time, it's been easier to think about how can we leverage-- how can I not try to advocate for more student workers and maybe another full-time position, and advocate for additional money to be able to outsource and work with vendor partners on some of this stuff?
NOAH PEARSON: Awesome. Thank you, Korey. Well, that's all the time we have for today. That felt like it went by pretty fast. But huge, huge thanks to Korey, Kristine, and Robert for sharing some amazing information with us. And thank you to our audience for joining us and asking some great questions as well. So thanks again, everyone, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.
KOREY SINGLETON: Thank you. Enjoy your--
