1. Allied for A11y: The Campus, System, Vendor Partnership
Good morning. Our presentation is “Allied for Accessibility, The Campus, System, Vendor Partnership.”
April 17, 2018

2. University Information Systems
Brad Baker
Assistant Director Student System Development
University of Colorado System
Art Figel
Assistant Director of Student Systems
Chris Toomer
Assistant Director Enterprise Portal and Mobile Applications
My name is Art Figel.
With me are my colleagues, Brad Baker and Chris Toomer.
We work for University Information Systems which is the IT department for the University of Colorado System.
UIS supports enterprise-wide applications in use across our four campuses.

3. About the University of Colorado System
CU is a four campus system with Boulder, Colorado Springs, Denver and Anschutz Medical Campus
Boulder, 33,000+ students
Denver, 15,000+ students
Colorado Springs, 12,000+ students
Anschutz Medical Campus, 4,000+ students
Nearly 32,000 faculty and staff
Some quick information about the University of Colorado System…
Kosta had 35,000 employees in his slide, which may include student employees

4. Overview Partners Facet Review Case Studies Questions & Answers
GreyHeller PeopleMobile (GHPM)
Fluid CU Resources
Questions & Answers
Here’s a quick overview of what we’ll be covering at a high level.
Partners, who are the parties that we’re talking about
Facet Review, what are the factors that are considered during software development and implementation
Case Studies, we’ll go into two current examples of our evolving partnership and processes
Lastly, we’ll have time for Q&A at the end

5. Partners CU System – University Information Systems (UIS)
UIS maintains and supports system-wide enterprise applications
CU Boulder – Office of Information Technology (OIT)
OIT maintains and supports campus applications
Accessibility and Usability Lab (AUL) provides testing and evaluation of IT solutions for usability and accessibility
Vendors (example cases)
GreyHeller
Oracle
System
Boulder
Vendors
Laura talked about the importance of talking about accessibility with vendors and stressing the importance with them. I couldn’t agree more.
I want to add that it’s also important to talk with your internal partners and stakeholders. Some of you know the recent history and catalysts for advances CU has made in accessibility in the last 4—5 years. Even prior to that…

6. Facets at UIS Quality Assurance Browser Compatibility System Stability
Navigability
Usability
Accessibility
QA – how we start with requirements, design, testing (automated, UAT)
Browser Compatibility – validating applications on different platforms
System Stability – load testing, system monitoring
Navigability – from a user perspective
Usability – looking at the user interface design
Accessibility – one thing that we’ve become increasingly aware of is the ongoing maintenance cost and risk of not doing the work up front

7. Partnership and Facets: UIS and UCB
Examples
Browser Compatibility: UIS/UCB shared BrowserStack licenses
System Stability: UIS/UCB shared Silk Performer instance
Usability: Partnering with UCB UX staff
Accessibility: Partnering with UCB AUL
Some quick examples of where UIS and CU Boulder partner on some of these facets.
Browser Compatibility – share BrowserStack licenses
System Stability – share Silk Performer
Usability – partnering with UCB UX staff
Accessibility – AUL

8. Partnership and Facets: Vendors
Examples
Vendors:
GreyHeller
Active partnership, changes to base code
Customize as necessary
Oracle
Implement delivered, certified products
GreyHeller – Active partnership – smaller vendor, quick turnaround on changes to base code
Customize as necessary, which we can do without affecting the base code because of the nature of the software
Oracle – Implement certified products as delivered, customize as necessary, care needs to be taken to preserve customizations during patches and upgrades
I’d like to call out a difference between these vendors and the one that Laura talked about, Canvas. GreyHeller are on-premise solutions – we license the software and host it on our own servers. Canvas is a SaaS (software as a service solution). With the on-prem applcations we generally have more control over when we deploy updates. With the Saas…

9. Case Study: GreyHeller PeopleMobile
PeopleMobile is an add-on for Campus Solutions (CU- SIS) to transform content, improving accessibility and responsiveness
It is a configurable, real-time transformation that allows large scale changes to PeopleSoft web pages
Seven month project to deploy PeopleMobile, including GreyHeller (vendor) work with transformation logic
The “classic” Campus Solutions interface for student self-service had many significant accessibility challenges.
PeopleMobile provides a layer to adjust this content in real-time, in part using jQuery
Worked with GreyHeller on a proof of concept before the project, evaluating the feasibility and pre-testing accessibility improvements
The result is generally much better, responsive and usable, but not perfect

10. Case Study: GreyHeller PeopleMobile, continued
GreyHeller, the vendor, provided browser accessibility testing that showed significant issue reduction
AUL provided in-depth user testing that exposed additional issues, some were severe
The dual testing layer gave us information needed to resolve usability problems with the vendor
Use of the JAWS screen reader was important for development teams
70-100% reduction in violations depending on the testing tool (aXe, Ainspector) and page
Iterating on problems identified by AUL with JAWS or NVDA was important to implement solutions – this experience showed the vendor’s JAWS testing was insufficient
49 pages of test results (CS9.2 upgrade), ongoing process to remediate these items after CS9.2
Performance is another concern that’s taken significant time – jQuery transform can slow the system

11. GreyHeller Peoplemobile at CU
Several teams were involved in the project, including:
CU-SIS domain experts, developers, Accessibility/Usability Lab and GreyHeller
Project success as a combination of AUL, Vendor (GreyHeller), and CU-SIS domain experts, and developers
Domain experts provided functional validation, GreyHeller and CU-SIS Developers adjust the configuration layer to mitigate identified issues, AUL provided detailed testing feedback for areas to focus on

12. Student Center Tiles
Student center content grouped into tiles by topic
The original layout was an unorganized collection of tables with links, and several cases of position based organization
After the transformation, links and content are organized into contextual tiles that simplifies navigation

13. Case Study: New CU Resources
CURFES: CU Resources Fluidization and Elastic Search
Created Steering Committee / Stakeholder Group
Campuses, Employee Services, UIS
Created Technical Working Group
Campus Technologists, ES Product Owners, UIS Technologists
Agile-like SDLC
UIS Developers now learning Assistive Technologies
UIS – AUL partnership is helping UIS improve our deliverables
Agile-like SDLC – Development, Stakeholder Review and Feedback, Technical Working Group Review and Prioritize, Repeat

14. CU Resources Example
Navigability, replaced quick links with tiles and one-click access to tools people use the most

15. UIS Skills/Process Improvements
JAWS license (purchased)
NVDA (free)
Development standards and processes
Professional Development/Training
Accessibility for web development Request for FY19
UX training and Conference Requests for FY19
Conference attendance
AHG, HEUG/Alliance, Collaborate, OpenWorld, others

16. Questions?
Contact Information
Brad Baker:
Art Figel:
Chris Toomer: