[atug] November 1 meeting recap: questions for vendors, testing, next meeting, etc.

[Ken Petri]

Dear ATUG Membership,

At the last ATUG meeting were: George Barnes, Alexa Murray, Steve
Kuusisto, Ken Petri, Michelle Salomone, Joe Wheaton, Cindy Zimmerman.

The next meeting of ATUG will be Monday, November 20, at 11:00 AM, in
the conference room in Pomerene 102. (Note: This was a tentative date
set at the meeting. Please write if you think a change of time or date
is in order.)

A lot was accomplished in our last meeting. One of the key things was
a joint authoring of a list of questions for the four vendors chosen
as finalists in the university's evaluation of mail and calendaring
software as part of the Enterprise Messaging Project. At the meeting
we were able to come up with an impressive set of questions. Below are
the questions I submitted to Tom Shafer, the Project Manager on the
Enterprise Messaging Project, for distribution to the final four
vendors:

1. Does any of your testing (internally or with focus groups) involve
people with disabilities?
2. Which assistive technologies have you tested your product with?
3. Assistive technology support for browsers other than IE is rapidly
developing. What browsers does your web client support and is the
behavior or feature set of the client different between browsers?
4. There are assistive technologies available on most desktop and
laptop platforms. If your product has a non-web-based client and/or
"connectors" to suites such as Outlook on the PC or Entourage or
Evolution on the Mac or Linux platform, have these
clients/"connectors" and platform-specific products been tested with
assistive technologies?
5. If your product has a stand-alone client, has your company or any
entity you know of written customized scripts to assist interaction
with assistive technologies, for example, JAWS scripts?
6. In the web client, is there the ability to customize the user
interface configurations (foreground/background colors, text fonts and
size, arrangements of elements, ability to customize page-level
elements)?
7. In the web client, is there the ability to run customized style
sheets (i.e. override the default styles)?
8. Should there be complaints about the accessibility of your product,
how will these be addressed and what will be the priority for
necessary product remediation?
9. Is your online (in-program or web available) documentation
accessible (tagged PDF, well-structured HTML, etc.)?
10. What other processes, if any, do you use to verify usability for
people with disabilities?
11. Where can one get documentation of your internal or external
accessibility testing?

I have seen the final documents that vendors will receive before they
come to campus next week and our questions are in there with no
changes. I am interested to see the responses.

Status of  testing accounts:

With assistance from Tom Shafer, Dave Smeleski from the Newman Group
has given us three accounts to use for Mirapoint. They are hosted on
the Mirapoint corporate server. Please contact me directly if you
would like to test. I can convene a small group of testers later this
week--Thursday maybe?--and we can take a look jointly and then I can
dole out accounts.

Sun, Oracle, and Symantec/Avanade Exchange have not yet responded to
Shafer's requests. He made another request today (November 7).
	
For enticing usability testers in the Winter, Alexa recommended Barnes
and Noble gift certificates. We will need to see how we can get them,
but this should prove motivating. We discussed connecting more
directly with Unity and working through them to organize some testing.
	
We floated a date of November 20 for the next meeting. This is the
Monday on which the Universal Usability Open House is happening at the
Digital Union (Please see:
http://digitalunion.osu.edu/NewsAndEvents/20061025UsabilityOpenHouse/
for details.)

During the next meeting we will pilot on as many of the web clients as
we can the usability protocol we are developing. Please contribute to
the protocol. The latest version in tagged PDF format, taken from the
Google Docs document, is attached to this email. You should already
have access to the collaborative document on Google Docs. If you don't
please write Ken and he can grant you edit access. Note that screen
reader users should send comments and changes to Ken, as Google Docs
is not screen reader accessible.

Joe and Ken test drove Morae Recorder and Manager with JAWS to see how
it performs with AT. Morae Recorder does not capture JAWS key
remappings but will capture dialogs and windows that get spawned. We
can bet that keystrokes made with Dragon also won't get captured (but
we'll have audio, so that won't matter). It's a safe bet that WYNN and
ZoomText may not be fully captured, but it looks like JAWS will create
the most problems in testing with Morae. Because of this non-capturing
of JAWS keystrokes it will be necessary to modify the "think aloud"
protocol, so that testers using AT are required to inform the
facilitator (and Morae) which keys they are using to navigate the web
applications. This alteration to the protocol has been included in the
Google Docs and PDF copies of the protocols, and Ken has incorporated
all other changes discussed during the meeting (to the best of his
ability). Alexa will make other modifications, drawing on protocol
documents she has from previous testing.
	
Since the meeting, dates have been given for the on-campus Enterprise
Messaging Project vendor visits.

Scheduled vendors:

11/13/06 - The EBS Group (Oracle Collaboration)
11/14/06 - Sun (Sun Java Messaging)
11/15/06 - Symantec (Microsoft Exchange)
11/16/06 - The Newman Group (Mirapoint)

Location (all days):

Mount Hall, Room 145
1050 Carmack Rd

Agenda:

8:30 AM - 11:30 AM: The vendor is invited to detail their solution with
the Enterprise Messaging project team.  Questions submitted by the project
team (in advance of the meeting) will drive the morning discussion.

It is my understanding that there will be an afternoon open session
from 1:30 to 3 PM on each day in which anyone can come and ask
questions of the vendors and test drive products. I will be at all of
the morning sessions next week. I will let you know via this list if
afternoon sessions are happening.

Rgrds.
ken
-------------------------------------------------------
  Ken Petri
  Director, OSU Web Accessibility Center
  102 Pomerene Hall
  1760 Neil Avenue
  Columbus, Ohio  43210
  (614) 292-1760
  mailto:petri.1 at osu.edu
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