[WG: Accessibility] Sakai 2.7 Accessibility Review Tool Priorities

Wed Feb 3 07:40:49 PST 2010

Hello David,

I wanted to say thanks for raising concern over the number of open accessibility issues. I've known that there are many accessibility related Jira tickets that were created by the accessibility working group from past reviews, but the weight of them had not become real to me yet. 

Very few of the active Accessibility working group members are developers or have experience working in the Sakai design and development communities and there hasn't been a direct awareness of how best to write Jira tickets that would support developers. Gonzalo did a great job of communicating the developers view of a Jira ticket to the group on our last teleconference. I see that our group needs to take a more active role in carrying the responsibility for following through on the accessibility tickets.

Gonzalo is has taken on the task of going through and responding to many of the accessibility Jira tickets. Mary Stores, Joe Humbert, and I will be meeting regularly and working to assist Gonzalo's effort. Mary Stores and Joe Humbert have performed much of the accessibility testing for the last several accessibility reviews and have firsthand knowledge of the issues. 

Please let us know if there are any particular Jira tickets you have questions or concerns over. Feel free to contact us over the accessibility wg's list or contact me directly.

-Brian
Accessibility Working Group Lead

-----Original Message-----
From: David Horwitz [mailto:david.horwitz at uct.ac.za] 
Sent: Friday, January 29, 2010 2:26 AM
To: Richwine, Brian L
Cc: Whyte, Anthony; Silverio, Gonzalo; accessibility at collab.sakaiproject.org WG
Subject: Re: Sakai 2.7 Accessibility Review Tool Priorities

Hi Brian,

As a member of the maintenance team I'm worried about the number of open
accessibility issues that have not received attention. There seem to be
in the region of 60:

http://jira.sakaiproject.org/secure/IssueNavigator.jspa?mode=hide&requestId=12220

This is quite more than the maintance team can address or quite frankly
even properly check to see if the issues still apply to current versions
of Sakai. Seeing as 2 of the tools on your priority list are under the
maintenance team purvue this will have inpact on us  (and I'm not sure
we have the resources or necessarily  the skills to address them)

David

On 01/28/2010 11:04 PM, Richwine, Brian L wrote:
> Hello,
>
> The accessibility working group is getting ready to start an accessibility review of Sakai 2.7. Due to limited resources, we have to focus our efforts to a subset of the Sakai tools. We have picked a set of tools to focus our review on based on tools we know get used most by students and instructors, ones we haven't tested in a while, and on ones we know through various channels have had significant UI changes.
>
> The tools we are focusing our efforts on are:
>   -High Priority: Chat Room, Forums, and Wiki
>   -Medium: Peferences, Profile, Membership, Account, Worksite Setup, Announcements, Assignments, Calendar Summary, Drop Box, Home, Link Tool, Messages, Post 'Em, Presentations, Resources, Schedule, and Syllabus
>
> Gonzalo suggested that we contact you in your role as a release manager and see if there are any tools we are overlooking that deserve attention in our review.
>
> Thanks,
>   Brian Richwine
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Silverio, Gonzalo [mailto:gsilver at umich.edu] 
> Sent: Thursday, January 21, 2010 8:58 AM
> To: Richwine, Brian L
> Cc: accessibility at collab.sakaiproject.org; Whyte, Anthony; David Horwitz
> Subject: Re: [WG: Accessibility] Sakai 2.7 Accessibility Review Concerns
>
> Hi,
>
> The core tools have not changed all that much in 2.7 (excluding Forums,
> perhaps Wiki). 
>
> I think Anthony Whyte <arwhyte at umich.edu> and/or David Horwitz
> <david.horwitz at uct.ac.za> will have (as release managers) a good idea of the
> degree of change across all the functionality that is going into 2.7. I have
> ccd them here. Extrapolating from the JIRAs and commits might help surface
> where things have changed, but they would know for sure.
>
> Thanks.
>
>     -Gonzalo
>  
> On 1/20/10 5:37 PM, "Richwine, Brian L" <brichwin at indiana.edu> wrote:
>
>   
>> Hello Gonzalo,
>>
>> The accessibility WG is working on the Sakai 2.7 Accessibility Review, and
>> Mike Elledge suggested I contact you to see if you knew which tools were new
>> or have undergone significant changes for the 2.7 release.
>>
>> Sincerely,
>>   Brian Richwine
>>
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Michael S Elledge [mailto:elledge at msu.edu]
>> Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 5:24 PM
>> To: Richwine, Brian L
>> Subject: Re: [WG: Accessibility] Sakai 2.7 Accessibility Review Concerns
>>
>> Hi Brian--
>>
>> I think taking a "triage" approach makes the most sense. That's how
>> we've approached it in the past, i.e., reviewing only new tools or tools
>> with substantive changes.
>>
>> You may want to send a note to Gonzalo Silverio--in the past he would
>> let us know where the major changes had taken place. He may still keep
>> track of those things...
>>
>> Mike
>>
>> Richwine, Brian L wrote:
>>     
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> In preparation of writing Alan Berg (Sakai's Interim QA Director)
>>> about performing the Sakai 2.7 Accessibility Review, I discovered that
>>> we are quite late in starting the review. I am not sure if the release
>>> timeline found in the release practice guidelines [1] is being
>>> followed, but according to it, accessibility testing should have begun
>>> at 24 weeks prior to the release. Yesterday I saw message on the Sakai
>>> Announcements list that published the Draft 2.7.0 Release Schedule [2]
>>> and gives a release date of 22 April 2010 for Sakai 2.7. April 22nd is
>>> only 13 weeks from now.
>>>
>>> A past critique of the Accessibility Reviews has been that they come
>>> too late in the release process and only the easiest of accessibility
>>> issues found could hope to be fixed before the release. Since the
>>> Accessibility Reviews focused on tools worthy of release
>>> consideration, the tools' designs are already very established and
>>> accessibility issues cemented into those designs were unlikely to be
>>> addressed. If the Sakai 2.7 Accessibility Review is indeed quite late,
>>> does the group think the review as we have in the past would still be
>>> of value and worth doing given our finite resources and a strong
>>> desire to participate in the early design of Sakai 3?
>>>
>>> I think the review would have value in checking any new tools, and in
>>> looking for new issues or improvements in the tools that have changed
>>> significantly. This would help us update the Sakai Current
>>> Accessibility page, the accessibility help page, and update/add Jira
>>> tickets.
>>>
>>> Footnotes:
>>>
>>> [1]
>>> http://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/REL/Release+Practice+Guidelines#Re
>>> leasePracticeGuidelines-ReleaseTimeline
>>>
>>> [2]
>>> http://collab.sakaiproject.org/pipermail/announcements/2010-January/000187.ht
>>> ml
>>>
>>> -Brian
>>>
>>> Brian Richwine**
>>>
>>> Adaptive Technology Support Specialist**
>>>
>>> Adaptive Technology and Accessibility Centers**
>>>
>>> Indiana University - Bloomington/Indianapolis**
>>>
>>> http://iuadapts.indiana.edu**
>>>
>>> (812) 856-4112**
>>>
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
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>   