Welcome.
Thank for joining us this morning, everyone.
I'm Mike Scott.
(Excuse me, I have a frog in my throat.)
I'm the Chief Information Accessibility Officer with the
State of Illinois Department of Innovation and Technology.
Thanks for joining us this morning to celebrate the 13th
Annual Global Accessibility Awareness Day.
We're going to be sharing some information about accessibility,
some highlights, a little challenge at the end.
I won't give too much away, but before we get into that, just a
little bit of housekeeping. You are all muted.
Please keep yourself muted during the presentation.
If if you would like to chat in some questions, we'll keep an
eye on those and answer them either as we go or at the end if
we've got some time.
If you've got something urgent, you can you can raise your hand
using Control Shift R if you're using hotkeys.
Also, if you need closed captions or would like closed
captions, we've got Webex automatic captions running.
There's a CC button should be in the lower left.
You can show those at any time.
And we've also got two wonderful interpreters with us today.
So appreciate them being with us.
I'm going to just give a little bit of thanks before we jump
into our agenda. I'm watching the numbers of participants go
up.
So thanks everybody for coming.
I want to shout out to it looks like we've got a great mix staff
from DoIT, DHS, DRS, I think I see a DHR on there, CMS.
Thanks to everybody from the CMS eLearning Round Table.
I know we co opted your meeting today, but please listen in and
this will be relevant to you too.
Special thanks to our participants from the Governor's
office, Attorney General's office, I see some members of
the Interagency Committee on Employees with Disabilities, our
long time co conspirators with the Illinois Assistive
Technology Program and I think I see some University of Illinois
partners there as well.
Special thanks to our corporate partners who could be with us
Cisco, Google, Siteimprove.
Thanks for all the work that you've done over the last few
years to help us make our IT and your IT more accessible.
We really appreciate all that.
So thank you for all you've done for us.
And special thanks, of course to our partners from the advocacy
groups to Equip for Equality, National Federation of the
Blind.
Andrew from Equip is going to be talking with us in just a moment
too.
But I want to wrap that up with a special thanks and welcome to
Sanjay Gupta, our Secretary of DoIT and CIO of the State of
Illinois.
Thanks for being here.
Secretary Gupta, would you like to share a few words?
Yes, thank you, Mike, and good morning, everyone.
This is an important part of what we do in the state of
Illinois is accessibility.
And yes, I won't steal Mike's thunder here, but there is a lot
of elements around accessibility that are relevant to a large
part of our resident population and even our state staff
employees.
I have been working in this space for almost a decade
myself, so have a a first hand experience in the public sector
trying to see how we can improve accessibility.
There's several aspects of accessibility that I just want
to briefly touch about.
First and foremost is awareness.
Awareness in terms of that there are specific accessibility
requirements that we all have to be mindful of and there's a good
reason why they have to be complied with and met with.
Having said that, I'll also say that I've been in the IT world
for quite some time now, private sector and public sector now.
But I've also noticed that even though specific laws were
enacted decades ago, that awareness is still, let's say,
wanting more to be there.
And so I would encourage all of you, whether today or tomorrow
or anytime, take a few minutes to please just make yourself
aware of this.
I'm so glad that we have Mike on our team.
For some of you who worked with Mike in this space, I don't know
of any other person which I said I've worked in the public sector
for almost 7-8 now years or more who is knowledgeable, who is
passionate, who has dedicated his career for this aspect of
accessibility.
That gives you an indication of how important this field of
accessibility is for him personally and professionally.
And I applaud him and has applaud his dedication to this
and the work he's done for the State of Illinois over his
career so far. It's just breathtaking and I think we all
should take a little bit of inspiration for the work Mike
does and continues to do for the state of Illinois.
It's critical work, it's important work, it's vital work
and it hurts my feelings and my heart when I hear sometimes
partners, individuals or entities talk about
accessibility
in what I call a light manner, because I know this is not a
light topic and again I would encourage all of us to do our
part.
So that was awareness.
The second part is we are all contributors of creating
documents amongst other things we do every day.
Whether it's an e-mail we're writing or we're creating a Word
document or a PowerPoint document.
The second aspect of this is this is everyone's job, myself
included, including everyone on this call here to create
documents, to offer documents which have accessibility as a
requirement to start with.
And I'll tell you some some examples that which I think I
know of.
I'm probably stealing Mike's thunder here because he's
probably going to talk about it, but I'll just sort of give you
my perspective on it.
Is that a lot of us if we did even a very little part of what
we do every day in creating documents and making sure that
we are keeping the eye on accessibility.
It's a very simple ask for all of us to do, but it goes a long
ways in improving accessibility of all of our work products.
If you create author document that are accessible to begin
with or if not 100% accessible you have at least made what I
call more than 50% effort towards making a document
accessible.
When you author a document keeping accessibility in mind.
So again, my my call for action for all of us here today is
please, please, please.
It's a very simple thing in the tools we use in our office
suite, whether it's e-mail, whether it is a Word document,
whether it's a PowerPoint document, whether it's an Excel
document, There are very simple things each of us can be doing
as we offer these documents to ensure that the documents are
accessible.
So, so, so my request to you is take that extra 30 minutes if
you have to try and understand what is the element of authoring
documents that are accessible because that'll help improve our
state's ability to produce all of our work products in an
accessible manner.
So awareness and we all play a part in it.
So please don't think that this is Mike's job or somebody else's
job.
It's each and every one of our job to create document that are
accessible and when we see work products that are not
accessible, to help us make them more accessible, if not 100%
accessible, which would be the ultimate goal.
So with that said, I know it's a longer introduction than
probably you may have thought about, but I just wanted to
share my sentiment, my support, my conviction that this is an
important topic for us at the State.
We are taking it seriously and I would urge all of us to consider
to do each of our parts in making the state more
accessible.
So with that said, Mike, I'm going to turn it back to you.
Thank you so much Secretary.
We very much appreciate your support and and the challenge we
will get into that a little later today but what we can all
do to to do our part at least the first step.
So we we have an assignment coming up that the Secretary has
alluded to.
Thank you again.
Before we get to that I do want to jump in just with a little
bit of news what's new as Secretary said you know
accessibility is not new.
We were looking up some of the dates earlier this morning, the
first Illinois Web Accessibility Standards were adopted all the
way back in 2002 and then the IITAA the state law in 2007.
This isn't new stuff but we keep plugging, we keep trying and as
the Secretary said you know we still have a ways to go but you
know we're going to keep working there.
So being here today is part of that We appreciate that very
much. New on the radar, very new, very fresh, within the last
month.
The big news, if you haven't heard it already, is the United
States Department of Justice, the DOJ,
issued an official rule under Title II of the Americans with
Disabilities Act, and the ADA, if you remember, was passed in
1990, before technology as we know it today even existed.
It doesn't speak specifically to information technology, websites
in any way because it wasn't around.
But the DOJ has issued an official rule that says under
Title II, which applies to state and local governments, the ADA
requires that web information and services do have to be
accessible and do have to comply with the Web Content
Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 Level AA, little bit of a
mouthful there.
The good news there is, is that in the state of Illinois we are
ready well along that path.
Again, not that we're there yet.
We certainly have work to do, but the IITAA has been requiring
compliance with WCAG 2.0 since its origins and for the last six
years since WCAG 2.1 has been out, we have been encouraging
compliance with WCAG 2.1.
So the DOJ ruling really just solidifies what we have been
working towards already.
And for those of you on the call today who participated in in the
fall in November with the IITAA Work Group, we get together once
every three years as required by the law to revisit our
standards.
And at that time we knew this rule was in the works.
We didn't know what exactly what it was going to say and the
recommendation of the work group was let's hold where we're at
which is WCAG 2.0 and as soon as this rule comes out let's follow
suit.
So I want to tell you just a little bit more about the rule
and then we'll talk about what we're doing to update the IITAA
and we'll go from there.
So a few other key things about this rule.
It applies to all state and local governments again in in
the state we're in good shape.
Local governments may have a bit of a scramble ahead of them.
It applies to web information, websites, web application and
mobile apps specifically.
So that's good news.
Again, WCAG 2.1 AA.
It's industry standard.
We're we're feeling good about that.
Interestingly, the rule includes a few limited exceptions. They
actually reduced some of the exceptions they were originally
thinking of.
There are some exceptions to compliance primarily for really,
really old stuff that is only out for archival purposes.
So there are some exceptions based on that.
It is very limited and and and there's a few other exceptions
related to that.
Interestingly though and in a part of the rule that we've come
across in reading the fine print is that it also limits the idea
of what what's referred to as conforming alternate content.
And what that is it's actually a concept that the that the WCAG
guidelines introduced it's the idea that you know say you have
a website and it not compliant it's not accessible.
One way to approach accessibility compliance would
be to say I'm going to make it another version, a text only
version of a website and it will have all the same information
and it will be accessible.
That was discouraged but allowed under the WCAG guidelines.
The DOJ rule specifically says we don't want that to be
misused.
Many of you who remember the bad old days of text only versions
of websites, it never worked well.
DOJ lays out, you know, the full rationale for why it just was
never really effective.
And they very specifically say that under their rule,
conforming alternate content, having a second accessible
version of whatever it is, is not acceptable unless it is
simply technically impossible.
So they do leave the door open a little bit, you know, maybe
there's a brand new technology related, you know, virtual
reality or something like that, something so cutting edge that
we haven't quite figured it out yet from an accessibility
standpoint.
They do leave the door open there to provide accessibility
through an alternate version in those cases.
But they say if it's possible we need to make the primary version
accessible.
They specifically say that you know it's it's not for
convenience, it's not for lack of knowledge and they
specifically say that lack of expertise or training doesn't
cut it.
So they have, they have put some very important and I think very
valuable boundaries guardrails around this idea having
conforming alternate versions that will be a little bit of a
change.
I will say we have used those in some instances we're going to,
we're going to have to not but I think again we're well
positioned to take that next step.
So that's actually the part of the rule that I'm most excited
about.
So that's good news.
You may also if you look at the rule, you may also notice that
they established a compliance date and they actually for
government, states our size, they set that out two years,
April 24th, 2026 and I put a little asterisk there.
That's to say, doesn't the law already apply?
And the answer is yes, it really does.
So you may notice in the rule that there's a compliance date
that's two years out.
DOJ even says that's kind of just like an aspirational
You know, if you need it, if you need it, if you work towards
targets, goals work towards that.
But you really already have to do this.
They say that the ADA already requires it, in Illinois, the
IITAA already requires it.
So if you do happen to see that rule, you know great, we'll
focus, we'll push hard for the next two years, but we need to
be there already.
So I just wanted to clarify that.
Regarding the IITA update again when we met in November, the
work group, decided that we would stick where we were, WCAG
2.0
until the DOJ decided, and they did.
So we are making the change.
We are updating IITAA.
We're releasing IITAA 2.1 that requires compliance with WCAG
2.1.
Again the the changes there aren't aren't major, we're
already well on that path, but we are officially making that
change and we're making it effective June 24th, 2024, which
is the same date the DOJ rule is effective.
So IITAA just kind of reinforces what the DOJ rule is requiring
of us.
IITAA does go a little bit further because while the DOJ
rule applies specifically to web and mobile apps, IITAA applies
to all IT.
So IITAA is still important because it fills in some of
those gaps.
If you are interested, the theIITAA 2.1 standards are
posted on the DoIT website.
This is a screenshot of doit.illinois.gov under
initiatives, accessibility, IITAA and the IITAA 2.1
standards.
It's got the little blurb introducing it and if you're
looking closely in the closing
or the starting paragraph here, it says information technologies
that are compliant
compliant with WCAG 2.1 Level AA are compliant with IITAA.
So if you compare the 2.0 version which is still out there
with the 2.1, we just did a find and replace on WCAG 2.0 and
replaced it with 2.1.
So good news, not a major change for us, one that we were looking
forward to, but one that we are making official as of June 24th.
It's not retroactive, but going ahead we're going to be
requiring, the state of Illinois, we're requiring
compliance with WCAG 2.1 Level AA.
I'm not going to get into the weeds on this today, but we did
in November go over there are 12 new single A and AA success
criteria that are in WCAG 2.1.
Not going to go into those weeds today there none of them are
revolutionary.
They do make some nice advances but again these are guidelines
that have been out for six years.
We've already been encouraging compliance with them.
If you do have any questions about any of the specific
criteria, feel free to contact me and and we're happy to do a
follow up discussion on any of them if you're interested.
But again, not a not a revolutionary change for us.
We were already headed firmly in that direction.
So with that update, you know the big news, that's the
exciting news about what's new in accessibility.
We're looking you know, for that to kick off, you know, renewed
interest.
Certainly DOJ is going to be looking at over our shoulders.
There might be an increase in lawsuits because of this.
But again, we're well positioned and we're just going to keep
pushing forward.
So with that all in mind, I'm going to take a breath here,
catch my breath and I want to invite Andrew Webb, who has been
a partner with us since the creation of my position here at
DoIT and even before that with Equip for Equality.
And I want to let Andrew share his thoughts about the impact
and importance of accessibility.
Andrew, you're good to go?
Sure.
Thank you very much, Mike
Appreciate your comments and I appreciate the introduction.
But just a few words here.
As Mike said, regarding referencing the importance and
the impact and the breadth of considerations of digital
accessibility and making online and digital resources impactful,
I think a good way to conceptualize this right from
the beginning is to go over some statistics and possibly the
statistics are up on the slide already.
But just to look at the CDC's statistics in the state profile
of Illinois about the number of people in our state alone who
have various types of disabilities, these are, you
know, these are meaningful numbers.
So there it's estimated that roughly 28% of residents of
Illinois have some type of disability at that rate in
itself is almost 3 million people.
Within that group, around 4% are estimated to have visual
disabilities.
So we're talking pretty close to half a million people with
visual disabilities, double that number, roughly have some type
of hearing disability.
Also, almost a million people and then nearly a million and a
half residents of Illinois have some sort of a cognitive
disability.
So considerations of accessibility and making online
and digital resources accessible to folks with disability.
This has a huge, huge impact when when resources are
accessible, it opens up worlds and services to lots and lots of
people all around us.
And conversely, when there are accessibility barriers, that
makes many of those resources unavailable to lots and lots of
people. Obviously problematic and obviously something we all
want to avoid. Working as an attorney at Equip for Equality
which for those of you not familiar with us, we are
essentially a not-for-profit legal rights organization
advocating for the rights of people with disabilities
throughout Illinois.
We based on community feedback and based on our expirations of
you know in our legal work, we see the ramifications of those
digital accessibility barriers all the time.
And then speaking for myself personally, I have both, I am
blind and I am also hard of hearing.
So these accessibility considerations are extremely
important and impactful to me and my own life.
So I see it both personally and professionally and you know it's
huge and I think they the key thing to bear in mind here and
is why it's so encouraging to see such a a wide cross section
of folks and organizations represented in this meeting.
It is critically important for companies and organizations to
be thinking of accessibility on the front end.
So just sort of bake accessibility into to the jargon
and to procedural practices.
And to be thinking about accessibility from the beginning
and to make sure the resources are made accessible in their
design rather than to encounter issues down the road that have
to be fixed retroactively.
Which I think as Mike and many of us can attest, that's always
more difficult to fix a fix accessibility after the fact
rather than to do it right in the beginning.
I think another thing that we all would recognize is that our
world has become more and more virtual particularly in recent
years and especially as we all know that COVID accelerated this
transition that so much more of our work and our interaction and
our commercial activities have become virtual.
And the in the past several years, especially since the
pandemic and for folks with disabilities in particular,
that's sort of a mixed bag.
It's opened up some wonderful opportunities for people to be
able to access services more easily and more conveniently.
Yet at the same time, if those resources, if digital resources
have accessibility barriers, it creates, you know, it forecloses
a lot of opportunities and it makes it much more difficult for
folks with disabilities to access many of those resources
on the same footing as their their non disabled peers.
So this just points to the critical importance of universal
accessibility and website design.
It's something that many that agencies across the state of
Illinois have gotten much have been getting much better about
in recent years.
And Mike and his colleagues at DoIT have had everything to do
with making that a reality.
And also if it points to the importance of making documents
accessible, to making documents available in an accessible
format to folks with different kinds of disabilities.
Also when meetings are held virtually such as webcast or
this meeting, it's so important that everybody be aware of the
accessible communication features that are that are
available on these platforms.
It's important that users have access to those features and
it's important that meeting host be sufficiently knowledgeable in
those features as to actually have them active and available
and to communicate those features to meeting attendees.
So it's really encouraging that we're having this meeting today.
It's great to see so many people on the meeting and clearly all
of you recognize the impact that this work and these efforts have
on our broader community and our state and beyond.
And we think it's, I'm sure it's onward and upward from here and
it's good to be spreading the word.
Thanks.
Thank you so much, Andrew.
And again Andrew has been a key partner along with Equip for
Equality and National Federation of the Blind.
Shout out again for everything they've done to keep us honest
and keep us moving in the right direction, wouldn't have been
here without you, so appreciate that.
So what I want to share next is where you all can get involved
and as Secretary alluded to and Andrew also reiterated the
importance of accessibility and what we're calling everyday IT.
So here in DoIT
You know we're dealing with the big systems, enterprise stuff,
you know whole agency web applications and we've come a
long way we've integrated into the whole state governance
process.
We've asked about accessibility you know far more often, far
earlier than we ever did before and you know we work closely
with our partners again shout out to Cisco and Google and
Siteimprove I think are on the call today but that's not all
there is to accessibility and again you know electronic
documents the way we communicate today is all IT.
So to kind of help distinguish what DoIT is doing and
everything else, we're calling this everyday IT, the everyday
IT stuff that we're all dealing with everyday, every one of us
and we'd like to throw out kind of over the course of the next
year here an ongoing series of everyday IT accessibility
challenges all focused on the little things that you can do to
help make your everyday IT more accessible.
And hopefully to start just thinking about accessibility on
a on a more regular basis and learning that hey maybe it's
really not as complicated and hard as I maybe thought it was.
A lot of this stuff is once you see it once you try it, you'll
think that's a piece of cake you know, why didn't I already do
this and that's where we'd love to get. So for today, our very
first everyday IT accessibility challenge.
First, a little bit of background information and I
think as Secretary alluded to, we've got some great tools and
Microsoft is another important partner of ours and there are
some great advancements that have been made in the Microsoft
Office suite of tools like Word and Outlook and PowerPoint and
etcetera.
What I'm sharing on my screen right here is a screenshot of of
Microsoft Word.
I've got a simple document in it.
It's got just a a picture of the seal of the state of Illinois.
In that document I've got the review ribbon open, and right on
that ribbon if you haven't seen it before and you can all follow
along if you want to.
Right on the review ribbon there is a Check Accessibility button.
Great big almost in the center and it opens up a menu that has
some options in it.
Check accessibility, alt text navigation, and a few other
options about accessibility.
So these are tools, nothing extra to buy here.
These are tools that are built right into the software that we
already have.
So maybe a quick thumbs up.
If you've seen this before, give me a thumbs up.
I see a hand raised.
OK
I see a few thumbs up.
Excellent.
OK, Now, if this is new to you, give me another reaction, a fire
or love or something else besides a thumbs up if this is
new.
If you haven't seen this before, chat in the chat, All right,
Well, hopefully if you've seen this before, this will be
encouragement to actually make use of it.
And if you haven't now you know, So what I'm going to just show
real quick.
And again, we're just going to scratch the surface.
We're going to keep it real easy.
But where we're going to start with here is, is using this
simple Word document as an example.
Again, it's just a blank page with a picture of the seal of
the state of Illinois.
In it we've got again, the review ribbon with the check
accessibility menu open.
If you look down in the status bar towards the bottom, a little
bit towards the left, there's actually a little indicator that
says accessibility investigate.
And that's just our, again, a feature we can turn on in Word
that will remind us if we're doing something that it
recognizes as maybe being a problem.
If it recognizes that it's potentially a problem, it's
going to warn us about it.
And then clicking on that or again going to the check
Accessibility button will bring up the panel that we're looking
at on the right here.
So if I click on Check Accessibility, it will then
bring up the accessibility panel that we see on the right.
In this case, the accessibility panel has a list of inspection
results.
There's there's a list of errors.
There's only one error right now because we got a really simple
document and it says missing object description picture 1.
So it's a little bit obscure.
I wish they would use straightforward language, but
you can probably figure out missing object description.
So if you're if you've ever heard of the concept of
alternate text or alt text, that's what this is about.
It does say it's about picture one.
If I were to click on that, it would highlight that picture and
it does down below
if you were to scroll down, it would give a little bit more
information about what's going on here.
So again, newish tool, hopefully will continue to get better.
Hopefully we'll continue to get a little bit easier to
understand, but good enough to make use of. So if I see this
error message missing object description picture one, I can
read a little bit more about what it means.
But I can also move on.
If I move ahead and try to do what it says here to fix it,
what it's going to do, it's going to bring up the Alt text
panel built right into Word.
So also this is also available under the Review ribbon.
Check Accessibility menu has Alt text.
I've now selected the image of the state seal that I've got on
the left and it brings up the alt text pane on the right that
has a great big box for me to type something in.
I will say the instructions that come above it.
There's a little bit there.
Scrolled off the view here that and it ends with 1-2 detailed
sentences recommended
That's maybe not the best instruction.
Let me give you a just a little crash course here on on alt
text.
Alt text or alternate text to give its full name is basically
what a screen reader will read or display in Braille to someone
who is blind and can't see what's on the screen.
So if I can't see that image, my assistant technology, my screen
reader, is going to tell me about it and it's going to say
something.
AI isn't quite to the point yet where it can figure out what to
say there.
We still get some humorous results when we do try some of
the new AI stuff that's in development.
Yesterday I ran AI on that image of the state seal, which to just
to describe it so we know we're looking at, it's the seal.
It's got a kind of gold cord circle around the outside.
It says seal the state of Illinois.
It's got the eagle holding the red banner with the motto
holding a shield with the stars and stripes and a few things in
the background.
When I ran AI on it the other day, it told me that it was a
circle containing text, bowl of soup, queen.
So I have no idea what it was thinking that day.
But obviously AI is not quite there.
We're looking forward to it, but we're not quite there yet.
That's a good point here.
If you were to click on this generate alt text for me, you
might get some crazy responses.
Don't use that yet.
We're we're anxious to see where AI will take us in the next year
or two.
It's going to be good.
We're not quite there.
So the question is then for me,
What should I type?
What should I write as the alt text?
What should I tell a screen reader to say if someone who's
blind encounters this image?
And what's a little bit misleading in the instructions
that I'm not showing on the screen
here is a lot of times we think about or maybe the easiest way
to think about alt text would be to describe the image, what I
did a moment ago where I described what it looked like.
Normally that's not what we want to do for alt text.
What you need to ask yourself is not what does the image look
like, but what does it communicate.
And that means that context matters.
So the same image might communicate something different
in different contexts.
Let's imagine that I'm writing a memo and I want it to look
official, so I'm putting the seal on it.
So what this what this image is communicating
if this is going to become an official memo, is that this is
an official document of the of the state of Illinois.
And another good tip about alt text is if there are words in
the image, they probably should go in the alt text.
So I'm going to look at the image and sure enough there's
words in there.
Seal of the State of Illinois, the date of founding, a few
little things that I can't read.
So I'm thinking about what am I trying to communicate by
including this image.
Are there any words and if so, what combination of those things
give me what to say here.
And to keep it really simple, what I would type in is simply
seal of the state of Illinois.
Those words are in the image.
My intent in including it here is to make it seem official.
If someone were reading with a screen reader that found it,
graphic Seal of the State of Illinois is what it's going to
say and it's going to communicate that this is an
official document of the state of Illinois.
And that's really all there is to it. Easier maybe
you know, when I say it, it sounds easy.
It's a little bit harder when you're actually in the weeds
doing it.
But again, think about what does it communicate,
look if there are words showing in the image, and keep it
simple.
So if this was a different document, I mean, if this was a
document about the design of the seal of the state of Illinois,
maybe I would go in and describe it.
But that's not what I'm imagining in this context.
So communicate what I am meaning to communicate and in this case
I'm communicating that there is the seal of the state of
Illinois is stamped onto this document virtually.
So there's a there's a crash course on all text.
Easy enough to add it.
You can again go to, you know select any image you might get
prompted to do that by the accessibility checker.
Click an image.
Go to check accessibility and alt text.
You can also right click the image and pick it from there.
You'll get this alt text box, a place to type, communicate what
it's communicating, include words that are in the image and
keep it simple.
So with that understanding kind of how easy it is to take the
first step down the accessibility journey, including
alt text and using the checker built into the Microsoft Office
suite of tools.
What I want to... Here's the real challenge.
So that was just kind of the lead up to it.
I do encourage you to play with that and get familiar with
what's there and learn about it.
But here's the real challenge.
Microsoft has an interesting, maybe secret way that we can
prompt other people to think about accessibility.
And this is a setting in Outlook.
And what I'm sharing on the screen here is it's a screenshot
of the web browser.
And this is something that you need to
You can't do this through the Outlook program, but you
actually need to go to your Outlook account on the web.
So I've got a screenshot of the web browser.
I'm at outlook.office.com.
You can go there too
If you've got an Outlook account, you sign in with your
credentials.
So at outlook.office.com I'm signed in.
You can't quite see it in the screenshot, but in the upper
right I've got a little profile picture and there's a little
gear icon which is the settings button.
So you'll find the settings button, you'll click it and then
you'll get what I'm sharing on the screen here, which is the
settings, the Outlook settings window.
So in this settings window I'm going to go to General, then I'm
going to go to Accessibility, and then I'm going to look in
the accessibility panel for this interesting check box that says
ask senders to send content that's accessible.
And above it, it says you can let senders know that you prefer
accessible content by selecting the check box below.
People who send you e-mail will be reminded to make their
messages accessible and can get information about how to do it.
So that's the challenge we're going to leave you with today.
OK, we've got we've got these instructions up on our website,
so you don't have to memorize it, but you'll basically want to
go to outlook.office.com, sign in, go to Settings, General,
Accessibility and check that box.
Ask senders to send content that's accessible. In case
you're scared about what that might do.
Don't worry, it's nothing that's too intrusive.
I have an example on the screen now of Outlook, so I've made
that setting change.
Now I've got a screenshot of Outlook, the regular Outlook not
on the web, and I've started an e-mail to myself because I have
that box checked and I titled it Everyday IT Accessibility
challenge.
Hi, want to know how to make your emails more accessible.
And then I've got my signature, which has got my name and e-mail
address and so forth, and a logo.
OK, and that's what I'm looking at in this message.
And if you look closely, you may see in the upper left it says
right, right above the to and the send buttons just below the
menus it says we've found some ways to make your message more
accessible and there's a link to review accessibility issues.
So it's a pretty unobtrusive warning.
It's not going to stop them from sending their e-mail or do
anything that's going to get them mad at you.
But it's just a little friendly reminder, hey, you could do
something better for accessibility with this message.
If if you were to click on that link, you'll get something
that's very familiar.
So what we see now is the accessibility panel open in the
Outlook new message window.
So looks just like the one we were looking at in Microsoft
Word.
It's got inspection results, errors, same thing we saw in
Word.
This time it says same thing, missing object description,
picture one, same error.
But this time it's got highlighted in my message the
DoIT logo that I have the at the bottom of my signature and that
logo it says DoIT,
it's got the stylized state of Illinois, says Illinois
Department of Innovation and Technology.
So I bet you can guess what would come next.
So say I was sending this e-mail to somebody and they had that
that reminder on.
I got the little note to say, look, and I get this information
about, hey, you got a problem, There's some more instructions
on the screen here how to fix it, and it's going to look just
like we saw before.
If I go proceed to fixing it, I'm going to get the alt text
dialogue.
I got a box to type in.
I'm going to think, OK, what am I communicating by including
this and are there words in it.
So first of all I'm communicating that hey I'm with
DoIT, which is the Illinois Department of Innovation
Technology.
Those words are in it and pretty straightforward that that's the
appropriate alt text.
DoIT Illinois Department of Innovation and Technology.
Notice I don't have to put in the word picture or logo or
image.
Screen readers will automatically say that this is
an image.
Most screen readers will say there's a graphic and then it
will read the alt text.
So you don't need to put in the words that say picture of, image
of, logo of, anything like that.
It's not necessary. Screen readers have got that covered.
So just simply what are the words in the image that convey
what I'm trying to convey by including that.
And again I'm just trying to say I'm part of DoIT and those words
are in the image, so really easy.
So that's what will happen if you take us up on our challenge.
You go to office.outlook.com, you find that check box and
check it.
People who send you e-mail.
If they do include something in their e-mail that that Outlook
can recognize as being a potential accessibility issue,
they'll get this simple, friendly reminder, hold their
hand a little bit towards making a fix and and and hopefully help
them think about accessibility.
You know, that's really the goal here.
You know, it's pretty easy to write an accessible e-mail if
you just write words.
And that's maybe a good point too, if there's nothing that's
wrong,
if I didn't have that image that was missing alt text,
I wouldn't get the message.
So it's not like you're going to be bothering people who are just
sending simple text only emails.
There's no no message will come up for that.
But if they include an image or they do some fancy formatting
they include, you know, they put colors on their fonts that are
too light to meet contrast
They do some fancy layout with tables that might cause some
problems.
Those are the kinds of issues that the checker will prompt and
help you fix.
So it's probably a good thing to point out.
You know these checkers
they're great.
They're a great step in the right direction.
Use them.
Learn them.
Take advantage of it.
It will become second nature.
You won't even have to have to think about it.
But it's not
It's not the end of the process.
There are more things. You know, the checkers can't check
everything.
There can be more things that go into accessibility if you get
fancier, probably fancier than what we ever want to put in an
e-mail.
But you know, certainly in Word documents of PowerPoints you can
get fancier.
There are a few more things that that that are involved in in
accessibility for those.
So it's not the end
Using the checker is the beginning, not the end.
And for those additional things, we provide information and I'll
come back here for questions.
Good, we got time for questions.
But before we get to the questions, I do want to share
with you where we've got some more information that you can
follow up on.
So at the DoIT website, doit.illinois.gov I'm going to
go ahead and go there.
Loading.
Bear with me.
Usually this is fast.
OK, well, what we're going to see here in a moment, let me try
that again.
Going to go to the main DoIT website, there we go,
doit.illinois.gov If you scroll down a little bit, you'll see
we've got initiatives, accessibility here, one of our
main initiatives also available off the initiatives menu.
So we'll get here to accessibility.
This is our accessibility page, this is where I was trying to
go.
We've got information about the law, IITAA.
If you're interested in the 2.1 standards, that's where they
live.
Guides, which is where there's a whole bunch of useful
information about some of the things that we just talked
about.
Training, kind of a placeholder.
We do offer lots of training.
We do it mostly ad hoc.
So if you've got a need for training, let us know.
We're happy to set one up. And then Testing, that's it gets a
little bit more technical but when we're testing web
applications for accessibility, we've got a whole process.
Some of our partners in the corporate sector have helped to
put that together.
But what I want to focus on today is the guides.
This is probably what's going to be most useful in our everyday
IT challenge, so I'm going to click on Guides, hopefully get
there.
OK, what we're going to see in a moment here, I don't know, maybe
my video is slowing my Internet connection down.
What we're going to see on guides is a list of
accessibility guides for Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, Webex,
InDesign, and a whole bunch of others.
Color contrast, The Outlook one there has, at the very top of it
It's got a refresher of of what we just talked about.
So sorry it's not wanting to load here for me.
Let me try it again real quick if not, there we go.
So here we've got a list of our accessibility guides.
You see there's a whole bunch of these are all except for the
first one.
Web accessibility is a little technical.
All the others are focused on everyday IT.
So encourage you to take a look at the guides here.
I've gone to the Outlook accessibility guide. Right at
the top we've got text instructions to do what we've
just looked at, doing. Ill add an image to back that up.
And then also basically if you want to write accessible emails,
here's how to do it in eight simple steps.
So I would encourage you to take advantage of these guides if you
got questions.
And then also if you if you have questions, feel free to contact
us.
DoIT Office of Information Accessibility.
That's my team, doit.accessibility@illinois.gov
Feel free to e-mail us just with your questions or if you would
like some more training on any of this.
So with that, I will back up and just open the floor for
questions.
Actually, I want to make a shout out for TJ Schlouski, who's
sitting just behind my shoulder over here where you can't quite
see him, who's been monitoring chat and stuff for me.
So, TJ, do we have any chat questions that need answering?
Yeah.
Lori has a very interesting question about how have physical
orthopedic disabilities been considered in addressing web
accessibility.
OK, and in case you can't hear TJ talking from behind me there,
it's Lori's question about how have physical disabilities
considerations for physical disabilities and how much impact
access for some persons.
How have physical orthopaedic disabilities been considered in
addressing web accessibility?
OK, great question.
Back on the pie chart I was sharing earlier, we didn't have
great data,
The data from the CDC that was about physical disabilities was
broken down into some categories, mobility, self-care
and independent living.
None of them really lined up well
you know, obviously someone can have a mobility issue and it
doesn't impact, you know, I can use a wheelchair and it doesn't
affect me using a computer in any way.
We didn't have a category there that really lined up.
This the self-care category was maybe the closest one that would
speak to manual dexterity issues and that's where accessibility
for IT is impacted by physical disabilities.
The the self-care category if you're interested had a 4%
number attached to it.
We actually had a little sliver of the pie that represented that
and there are issues some of the foundational principles of
accessibility.
The one example I started with today was the alt text for an
image and that's kind of accessibility 101, but clearly
that's about, you know, visual disabilities.
If we were to go to #2, I would have talked about keyboard
accessibility and the first thing that we see when
addressing the needs of people with physical impairments that
affect the use of their hands, which might be something from as
simple as arthritis or carpal tunnel syndrome all the way up
to, I mean a severe cerebral palsy or maybe even amputation
and and the full range.
But the first thing that becomes difficult to use is the mouse.
So one of the first and foundational principles of
accessibility is everything needs to work with keyboard
commands.
So that way if I can't use a mouse but I can use a keyboard,
I'm good to go if I need to use an enlarged or specialized
keyboard.
If I'm using speech recognition, talking to my computer and
giving it commands, it typically interacts through a keyboard
type interface.
So that that would have been accessibility 102
It's keyboard operability and there are requirements in WCAG
2.0 and 2.1 that speak to keyboard accessibility.
There are also some new requirements.
One of the new requirements in WCAG 2.1 is about labeling
things in such a way that speech recognition will work
effectively with them.
So great question.
You know we typically do focus on on the needs of people with
visual impairments but that's not all there is to it.
We talked about people with hearing impairments and people
with cognitive disabilities but also add to that people with
physical impairments.
If we had better data about it
I would have highlighted on that slide.
So appreciate the question.
It is very important and again keyboard accessibility is kind
of the start of accessibility for people with physical
impairments and then it goes from there.
TJ, any other questions? Chris Garrett is asking the question
that he's heard that tables can be tricky when using screen
readers.
Do you have any suggestions on table formatting when creating
tables in Word docs?
Great question.
If you couldn't quite hear, it's Chris's question about using
tables and how do we make tables accessible using screen readers?
How would we do it in a Word document?
I'm going to use that to shamelessly plug our guide which
speaks exactly to that.
So if you make it back to the DoIT Accessibility site Guide
for Word, we actually have a recommendation about tables.
The good news about tables is screen readers have become
really, really powerful.
And they can
you know, we started with the simple stuff today, but it gets
much more advanced than that.
And screen readers can read tables of data very effectively.
If the tables are created properly.
In Word, it doesn't get too complicated and it's really a
matter of keeping it simple.
So in Word, kind of the principles for using tables,
which really applies to most everything that we're going to
talk about in everyday IT is use the tool in your program that's
designed to do the thing you want to do.
So if I'm making a table, I want to use the table feature in
Word.
If I'm making columns, I want to use the column feature.
If I'm making lists, I want to use lists.
You know, don't make a table by, you know, you could probably
find a way to draw lines and and whatnot.
Don't do that.
You want to use the features that are designed support, in
this case tables.
They will have the best accessibility support.
So first of all, use the table feature in Word to make tables.
Don't draw lines.
Don't use tabs.
Don't use columns, Use tables.
Secondly, keep it simple.
And that's always a good approach.
It's not that we can't get complex, we can.
We actually have the tools today.
As I said, screen readers have gotten really advanced.
Other assistant technologies have as well, and they can do
more advanced stuff.
But when you're starting, it's easier to keep it simple.
With great power comes great responsibility.
If you want to get fancy, you're going to do a little more work
to make it accessible.
So as a start, keep it simple.
When it comes to tables, that means keeping it,
you know, column headers in the first row, row headers in the
first column, and really, you're good to go.
Avoid merging cells.
And then there's one extra setting in Word that we outline
here about repeating header rows, and that's it.
If you stick to those five dot points, you have an accessible
table in Word, and a screen reader is going to do
a really good job of allowing a user to read through that.
They can actually read through it in two dimensions.
They can hit any cell, they can say tell me the headers of this
column in this row.
Very, very powerful if you use tables correctly.
So and that's really a good
again, a good theme to end on this stuff doesn't have to be
complicated, really. Use the right tool.
Use the tool how it's meant to be used, Keep it simple. Refer
to our guides and ask for help, ask for training if you need it.
So appreciate the set up there, Chris, TJ, another question, we
got time for one or two more?
We have one from Kim Phipps regarding timekeeping forms and
PDF formats.
What solutions would you suggest to addressing the easiest way
for electronic time keeping systems that are not acceptable.
So hopefully you saw, you probably can see Kim's chat
there, and welcome Kim.
I want to give a shout out to Kim.
I think I saw Judy West on the call.
Kurt Potter might be here. They're our A-Team. We use them,
as screen reader users,
we use them to check stuff that we're needing a double check on.
So appreciate the A-Team and Kim. Time keeping forms, PDF
forms in general,
you know, we actually have a guide about PDF forms.
They can be a little bit challenging.
The easiest way to do PDF forms is to use a tool called Adobe
Designer.
We won't go into the weeds on this but there are some
guidelines, some steps here that are involved.
Part of the problem that we have, you know this really kind
of speaks to the everyday IT challenge.
I think the biggest problem with forms is not that form PDF forms
can't be accessible, it's that PDF forms fall into the everyday
IT category and too often the people creating them, just,
accessibility is not on the radar.
We've worked extensively and if we got anybody from the DHS
Forms Management group on the call, shout out to them.
We've worked extensively with them on how to make accessible
PDF forms. It's absolutely doable.
It's it really to go back to what Secretary Gupta just said
in the beginning.
It's really about awareness.
It's are the people who are making these forms, do they know
that it needs to be accessible?
Do they know that there are resources available to them to
help?
So I think the biggest suggestion I can offer there is
help us get the word out, help us spread the word that everyday
IT including forms and Word documents and emails and Excel
spreadsheets.
They do have accessibility considerations.
There's guides, there's steps that you can follow.
We can all do our part.
But I think the biggest problem and and I think Andrew kind of
spoke to this too, is, you know, too often we're playing catch
up.
Somebody made a form, they weren't thinking about
accessibility.
It's sent to somebody who's using a screen reader and it's a
disaster.
And then we're scrambling to try to remake the form, figure out,
you know, what can be changed, how do we change it.
So it's, I think it's mostly an awareness issue.
So help us get the word out that that's really the core of the
everyday IT challenge and certainly take advantage of the
resources that we're talking about today, point people that
direction and feel free to contact us for help.
So thanks again, Kim.
I see Vani has asked a couple questions here about Excel.
Excel is a little bit trickier.
We don't have a guide posted yet for Excel.
We've got a start on one.
We'll get it up there. The number one, maybe I'll say two,
things about Excel.
Number 1, keep it simple.
Say if you do a table like I described for Word based on
Chris's question, you keep it simple.
Column headers in the first row.
Row headers in the first column.
Excel is pretty accessible right off the bat.
The problem with Excel is that it often gets used,
as I mentioned earlier, use the right tool, and Excel often gets
used in cases where it's not the right tool.
Excel is not meant for forms.
If you're making a form in Excel, you're probably not going
to be able to make it accessible because it's not meant for that.
So I think we will get an Excel,
again we've got one in the works,
We'll get an Excel accessibility guide posted here.
Please check back.
Let us know if you've got specific questions about it.
For now, use it when you're trying to show tables of data
and keep it simple.
All right.
I think that's all the questions in the chat.
Thank you again, TJ, if there's any last questions, feel free to
chat them in if you want to raise a hand to ask a question.
We got a couple minutes left.
Otherwise, thank you for listening.
Thanks again.
We had I think about 177 people at at our peak.
Appreciate you coming today.
Appreciate everybody who is willing to take us up on the
everyday accessibility challenge.
Again, we'll have the instructions and information
posted on our website, and feel free to reach out
doit.accessibility@illinois.gov at any time and hopefully we'll
talk again before next Global Accessibility Awareness Day.
Thanks, everybody.
Special thanks to Secretary Gupta, to Andrew Webb and to our
interpreters, and to to Val, who ran all this behind the scenes.
So thank you everybody.