We will get around to the accessibility issues ...

... right after we fix a few other bugs.

A story out of the University of Kansas tells the tale of 900+ exams that had to be tossed out due to software issues with the classroom 'clickers' used to take the exam. This story caught my eye because one of the topics discussed at the annual business meeting in November, 2007 was the formation of a Consulting Group that would work with institutions, companies, public entities, etc. to assess the accessibility of their products and services. A specific example provided by the head of this subgroup was that of a vendor of ‘classroom clickers’ who desired an outside and objective opinion of their products. These devices are more formally known as 'student response systems' or 'classroom response systems'.

The question before the ATHEN membership was to ascertain interest in doing such accessibility evaluations. In general - do we as an organization have the ‘horsepower’ to create an Accessibility Evaluation group and accept payments for such services. Yes -- 'payment' -- and there is where the conversation got a little uncomfortable for some of the members. Another possible catch for entities who hire ATHEN for such work is the insistence of leadership that such evaluations be made available for public consumption. We are a non-profit educationally affiliated organization with the mission to "collect and disseminate best practices in access technology within and for the higher education environment". The idea of doing such evaluations and then not making them available for at least our membership was something to consider.

In the end the matter was left to the membership to consider and for interested parties to think about it and have an off-line conversation with President Ron Stewart. Hopefully we will hear of updates about this at the CSUN conference.