[WG: Accessibility] What do institutions consider the Core Sakai Tools?

[Richwine, Brian L]

Hello Nate,

The Sakai Accessibility Working Group is working on a couple projects where the WG feels it is necessary to understand what the institutional view of Sakai is. Specifically, what do most institutions view as the core Sakai 2.x toolset or functionality? My hope is that through your experiences in the Sakai Community at large, and in your connections to institutions through rSmart, and in your examinations of and musings over who is using Sakai (I've read through a bit of your blog), is that you are in a position to offer valuable input to this question -- or, at least could recommend how the WG could go about gathering this knowledge.

The first project is working to understand the gaps in our accessibility reviews. Having addressed some of the weighty accessibility issues in Sakai 2.x, the WG hopes to have energy available to more fully and deeply examine Sakai 2.x's tools / functionality. Up till now, the Sakai Accessibility WG has focused its efforts in examining the accessibility of the tools available on the QA servers (specifically qa1-nl.sakaiproject.org). Due to limited resources, we've frequently focused our accessibility review efforts on a subset even of those tools, and in many cases, focused those efforts even further by on solving issues seen by student personas. Knowing what tools and functionality are getting institutional attention would help us in determining our priorities.

The second project is working to understand what the process of achieving an independent 3rd party accessibility certification should look like if it were to be pursued. If the certification is meant to show institutions that Sakai is accessible, it is important that we understand what tools/functionality is important to put forward for certification (from an institutional viewpoint).

If you have time to provide any input or thoughts, that'd be great! (If not, that's OK too, of course!)

Thanks,
  Brian Richwine
  
Brian Richwine
Adaptive Technology Support Specialist / Sakai Accessibility WG Lead
Adaptive Technology and Accessibility Centers
Indiana University - Bloomington/Indianapolis
http://iuadapts.indiana.edu
(812) 856-4112