Accessibility News
Introducing TAP’s Empathy Lab and Call for Community Steering Committee (CSC) members
Please share the call for CSC nominations with your professional and personal networks!
After being awarded SIPA Innovation Grant funds in September 2022, OIT’s Technology Accessibility Program (TAP) team’s Kate Miller, and OIT partners have been at work to lay the foundation for a successful launch of the empathy lab.
What is the Empathy Lab?
The Empathy Lab is a virtual inclusion and awareness lab designed to build awareness, empathy and desire to create accessible and equitable digital products.
We find ourselves in an ever-changing and expanding remote and digital world, where services and resources need to be available, without barriers, online. Unfortunately, that is not always the case for the 1,015,417 adults in Colorado who have a disability—equal to 20 percent or 1 in 5 adults.
By creating a partnership among OIT, TAP and representatives from historically marginalized communities that have experienced barriers to digital technology and products we can further the common goal of developing inclusive, accessible technology to serve all Coloradans.
How can you help?
The assembly of a 10-person Community Steering Committee (CSC), will be paramount to the work of the empathy lab and in helping Coloradans. Considering this is the inaugural launch of the lab, we are in need of all new CSC members.
- Please share the CSC webpage and nomination form (Google Form) with your respective personal and professional networks
- Encourage those that you know to share with their respective networks as well
While we know that our great community of current state employees is diverse in many ways, we are looking for members to join our CSC that are not currently employed by the state or local government entities.
The empathy lab will provide further opportunities for state employees to provide input as well.
Please share, far and wide! The OIT’s LinkedIn page has a shareable post you can share.
TAP Training is in Full Swing
Please note, the training referred to in this article is currently for executive branch agencies only.
From the beginning, the Technology Accessibility Program’s (TAP) mission has been, and continues to be, to provide specific and timely accessibility training support to executive branch agencies in order to help them comply with state accessibility standards and Colorado Laws for People with Disabilities (HB21-1110) resulting in equitable, accessible state services.
To that end, starting in January 2023 the TAP team has:
- Conducted upwards of eight instructor-led training sessions during our open office hour meetings
- Kicked off our Accessibility Center of Excellence (ACE) groups
- Developed and launched two eLearning courses (digital accessibility fundamentals and website accessibility fundamentals)
- Released two training pathways for website roles and communicators
- Launched 15 accessibility training courses through Level Access’s Access Academy
- Developed the training component of TAP’s empathy lab
And we are not done yet!
As part of our four-phased approach to training, we will be wrapping up phase one (the fundamentals) and working to release the following, as part of the next couple phases of the training strategy:
- Additional training pathways - for other critical job roles
- Microlearning - quick one-minute training videos based on a variety of accessibility topics
- Training Hub - An online training resource center, which will house all training materials
Accessibility Rulemaking Updates
Last May, Governor Polis signed SB23-244 Technology Accessibility Cleanup bill into law. SB23-244 Technology Accessibility Cleanup (Google Doc) helps to clear up any ambiguity within HB21-1110 by:
- Ensuring there is accessibility for all types of disabilities by allowing reasonable accommodations
- What is a reasonable accommodation?: A reasonable accommodation must ensure that individuals with disabilities have equal access to services or information, unless doing so would result in an undue financial and administrative burden or a fundamental alteration in the nature of the programs, services, or activities being offered.
- Requiring OIT to adopt rules regarding accessibility standards for IT systems employed by state agencies and local government entities
- Clarifying that a claim brought for a violation of accessibility standards constitutes a single claim for each digital product
- Extending agencies’ spending authority made in FY 2023-24 for IT accessibility through FY 2025-26
- Repealing obsolete provisions
Known rulemaking timeline
- OIT will establish an OIT rulemaking process according to the laws and Colorado’s Open Meetings Law (OML), and make that public. Then, the rulemaking process will begin.
- Launch the rulemaking process and a stakeholder engagement plan in late summer and into the fall, 2023.
- We anticipate that the first set of accessibility rules will become effective after the 1st of the year 2024.
If you wish to be notified of rulemaking updates and opportunities please fill out the Accessibility Rulemaking Notification Sign-up (Google Form).
Please reach out to Michael McReynolds, Senior Manager, Government Affairs, OIT, with questions at michael.mcreynolds@state.co.us
Learn more about the state rulemaking process.
Accessibility Resources
Braille future technology that is on the horizon: graphics displays
By Chelsea Cook (she/her), OIT TAP Accessibility Consultant
In last month’s newsletter, we learned about braille's importance and how current braille displays work. This article will focus on the future: displays that can show both text and graphics. Yes, that’s right, graphics!
“Tactile graphics, including tactile pictures, tactile diagrams, tactile maps, and tactile graphs, are images that use raised surfaces so that a visually impaired person can feel them.” (Wikipedia)
Tactile graphics have been traditionally limited to hardcopy formats and current braille displays can only display one line of text at a time. As companies promise pictures, this is a big deal. It could open up new fields to blind employees, or increase productivity in their current work. Imagine the maps, charts, graphs, and images that can now be readable—provided one can afford this technology.
At a recent adaptive technology conference that I attended, I found three companies promoting these displays.
- Orbit Research's Graphiti allows for different levels of pin raising to indicate grayscale and has the ability for a user to draw with a finger on the device.
- The Dot Pad is advertised as the “first tactile graphics display for the visually impaired.”
- The Monarch uses Dot Pad technology, can display text and graphics at the same time and is intended for the education market.
What the representatives will tell you in person, but not on their site, is that these will all cost tens of thousands of dollars. However, for the first time, a relatively affordable way to display graphics instantly is on the horizon. That is truly exciting!
Read about how tactile graphics can help end image poverty (MIT Tech Review).
Notable & Quotable
“The disability is not the problem. The accessibility is the problem.”
- Mohamed Jemni, Professor of Computer Science and Educational Technologies, University of Tunis, Tunisia