EDUCAUSE IT Accessibility Constituent Group Meeting Notes

An agenda item at the ATHEN annual business meeting a regular topic of conversation among the ATHEN membership is the EDUCAUSE IT Accessibility Constituent Group. ATHEN and its members supports the efforts of this group and has many members in both organizations. For those of you unfamiliar with this group, here is information from their webpage:

Programs, services, and resources at universities and colleges continue to expand exponentially, and delivery methods have become increasingly technology-centric. Unless these technologies are designed and deployed to support the access needs of all users, including those with disabilities, universities and colleges risk excluding qualified students, faculty, staff, and other stakeholders.

The IT Accessibility Constituent Group will help the EDUCAUSE community to assess the scope of issues of IT accessibility, identify resources and initiatives, develop best practices on policy and assistive program and service development, and in general focus on how to approach campus-wide universal access to information available via technology by engaging in dialogue across boundaries within and beyond the campus environment.

The IT Accessibility Constituent Group meets regularly and most recently at EDUCAUSE annual meeting in October. The notes are posted on Terrill Thompsons blog.
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Educause 2007: Technology in Plain English

Courtesy of the Chronicle of Higher Education - Educause 2007: Technology in Plain English

Chronicle editor Jeffrey Selingo interviews Lisa Trubitt of SUNY-Albany about communicating with different constituencies on campus. Also of interest is episode 6 of Tech Therapy and a piece titled "Talk to me like I'm a child." Listen for the TV Guide Exercise. There are good and simple lessons to learn here:

When talking with others on their campuses, IT departments at Davidson and Albany ran into common pitfalls. The messages are often highly technical and contain more information than the recipients can digest. Techies are big on acronyms, which others don’t understand. Messages often take a parental tone — don’t do this, you must do that — and they are sometimes contradictory. Techies also like to give people the back story — the whole tale of what it took to get, say, Windows Vista working on the campus.

She's a very geeky girl...

Poking around the EduCause site while trying to avoid studying -- and considering putting in a proposal for NERCOMP -- I came across a blog posting advertising The She's Geeky (un)conference which will "provide an agenda-free and friendly environment for women who not only care about building technology that is useful for people, but who also want to encourage more women to get involved."

The (un)conference is "designed to provide women who self-identify as geeky and who are engaged in various technology-focused disciplines with a gathering space in which they can exchange skills and discuss ideas and form community across and within disciplines."

Sounds like fun to me -- too bad I did not come across this posting until this weekend -- which also haappenes to be the weekend this event is taking place at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA.

EDUCAUSE IT Accessibility Constituent Group

Direct from the EDUCAUSE Website: IT Accessibility Constituent Group

Whether for pedagogical, administrative, social, or other ends, information, programs, and services at universities and colleges continue to expand exponentially, and mechanisms to access these programs, services and information have increasingly become technology-centric, both physically and virtually. All programs and resources must be equally accessible to students, faculty, staff, and other stakeholders, such as parents and local communities, as appropriate within the higher education environment, regardless of physical or other related abilities.

The IT Accessibility Constituent Group will help the EDUCAUSE community to assess the scope of issues of universal IT accessibility, to identify resources and initiatives, to develop best practices on policy and assistive program and service development, and in general to focus on how to approach campus-wide universal access of information by engaging in dialogue across boundaries within and beyond the campus environment.

Leader: Terry Thompson, Senior Computer Specialist, University of Washington, tft@u.washington.edu [and ATHEN member]

ATHEN Well Represented Among Top Tech-Savvy Community Colleges

The Chronicle of Higher Education Wired Campus Blog has posted a list of the "Top Tech-Savvy Community Colleges" in the United States. The category of "Small colleges - less than 3,000 students" caught my eye:

1st: Patrick Henry Community College, Martinsville, Va. (tie)
1st: Tompkins Cortland Community College, Dryden, N.Y. (tie)
2nd: Central Wyoming College, Riverton, Wyo.

Why - might you ask is this so interesting to this blog? Well, it just so happens that long-time ATHEN and AHEAD E-Text Solutions Group member Khaki Wunderlich is the Associate Dean of Learning Supportand Organizational Development and the Access Tech Goddess for the campus.

It was also brought to my attention that another ATHEN affiliated institution is among the Top Tech-Savvy Community Colleges:

Midsize colleges - between 3,000 and 7,500 students:
1st: Indian River Community College, Fort Pierce, Fla. (tie)
1st: Laramie County Community College, Cheyenne, Wyo. (tie)
2nd: Darton College, Albany, Ga.

As Lisa Dignan, Coordinator of the Disability Resource Center at LCCC points out "it must be the ATHEN membership that makes the difference, eh?"

As Membership Coordinator I should have caught this earlier -- but I do thank Lisa for tooting her own horn. I do not think this is a coincidence as here we have two 'tech-savvy' institutions where the professional staff not only understands the role of access technology but is committed to (and proud of) their work. So -- do we know anyone at the other CC's on these lists? Let's get out there and recruit new members!

BTW Lisa and Khaki -- now might be a good time to upgrade your ATHEN membership to the Institutional level.