October 28, 2020 Meeting
Agenda
Accessibility (508) Oversight Committee
Virtual
October 28th, 2020
3:30 pm – 4:30 pm
Attention: All Meetings Will Be Recorded
Agenda
- Welcome
- Review of Minutes & Approval (Amar)
- Mission/ History of the Committee (Amar)
- Review of the Charter (Amar)
- Discussion about CommonLook (Amar)
- Schedule Next Meeting Date (Amar)
- Meeting Adjourned
Date of next meeting: December 2nd, 2020
Minutes
Accessibility (508) Oversight Committee
virtual
October 28th, 2020
3:30 pm – 4:30 pm
Attendees: Jason Zsiba, Terri Smith, Kristi Richards, Nicole Avina, Vicky Jacobi, Natalie Woodall, Marianne Bishop, Xiaohong Li, Mariza Martinez, and Amar Abbott
Review of Minutes & Approval
Minutes were approved by unanimous consent.
Mission/ History of the Committee
The co-chair Dr. Amar Abbott gives a brief history of the 508 Accessibility Committee’s mission and goals. He discussed previous software that had been purchase for the institution to meet accessibility requirements and mandates. Also discussed was the Los Angeles Community College District lawsuit, which explained some of the recommended software to be purchased from the committee. Furthermore, the Universal Design framework was stated to be a focus of this committee since its creation.
Review of the Charter
When the charter was reviewed, there are two main areas of discussion. First, the specific responsibilities, and the second was membership to the committee. Specific responsibilities it was determined that no changes were needed to the charter. As for membership responsibilities, the co-chair had concerns regarding the office of instruction VP role in the committee as suggested that a representative from the apartment would be adequate to fulfill the role. The current Vice President, Dr. Leslie Minor, stated that she would attend when she could, and when she could not, she would send a representative from her department when necessary. The second area concerned was a library position, and Terri Smith stated that she didn’t have a problem being a part of the committee, so no changes were made to that position.
Furthermore, there was a robust discussion regarding the distance education coordinator position currently not part of the charter’s membership. Dr. Leslie Minor had concerns regarding having two administrators present at the committee meeting when she felt the director of Distance Education would be adequate. Dr. Amar Abbott stated that he would like to have the Distance Education coordinator present for their’s technical ability and historical knowledge. The committee would decide on whether the coordinator of Distance Education position should be added to the membership. It will be discussed in a future meeting at a later date.
Kristi Richards asked if will be appropriate for the coordinator of DSPS to be a part of this committee, and the committee determined that one representative from the DSPS department would be adequate for this committee.
Mariza Martinez asked what the role of faculty on this committee. Dr. Amar Abbott stated that the faculty’s role is to make sure that any software recommendations that could affect the classroom environment would have faculty representation. It would be brought to the committee’s attention to ameliorate any issues or concerns regarding technology in the classroom.
Finally, the committee further discussed facilities representative. Dr. Marianne Bishop suggested that if we needed any specific knowledge regarding facilities, we would invite them to the meeting and clarify any regulations and laws regarding accessibility in the facilities area. The committee agreed upon, and facilities representation will be stricken from the charter. The committee had no further changes to the document.
Discussion about CommonLook
Dr. Abbott explained that the funding source is the Guided Pathways Initiative, and the Guided Pathways Committee felt that 25 licenses was an appropriate number. Eventually, the institution would have to be able to sustain the use of the software. Also included in the quote was $4000 set aside for hard to convert documents such as the academic calendar. Hard to convert documents can be sent to Commonlook throughout the year for conversion to stay compliant with the accessibility laws.
Furthermore, Dr. Abbott further explained his reasoning about who should get the licenses and why. The shortlist was Office of Instruction, Distance Education, the website coordinator. Finally, faculty would be trained to convert their educational materials for on-line and off-line use.
Dr. Marianne C. Bishop asked who would get the 25 licenses, which start a robust debate about determining which departments or individuals would be allocated 25 licenses. Terri Smith had concerns regarding training departmental staff, and implementing the software, adding additional workload to the institution’s staff and departments. Terri Smith further states her concerns with training her staff and only having enough staff that would able to convert the library’s website content. Jason Zsiba noted that he would only have time to do legacy documents brought over from the old website.
Jason Zsiba had a brilliant idea by using data from Site Improve software that would help determine what departments have PDF documents that need to be remediated to determine the best use of the 25 licenses. Terri Smith elaborated that it was an excellent idea to help determine the departments that would be most effective with this software. It would also assess the workload by the number of legacy documents that needed to be converted. Terri asked if student workers could be trained to use the software once we come back to campus, and Dr. Abbott said that would be possible and has done so in the past.
Dr. Vicki Jacobi noted emphatically that this was a one time funds from the Guided Pathways and institution would have to find a way to sustain the utilization of the software. Currently, the president of the Taft College and the president academic Senate are make a determination of how the guided pathways funds should be used to procure different software’s and other items that the institutional needs. Commonlook’s software is one of those items.
Mariza Martinez asked could there be a demo program for the math department for the May in service, so they would not use one of the 25 licenses to see if it was appropriate for her department. Dr. Abbott responded that he would talk to Andy, the Commonlook vendor, to see if the vendor can accommodate our request.
Jason Zsiba showed and explained the Site Improve report and elaborated on what departments have PDFs throughout the website. The committee agreed that this would be an excellent roadmap to determine how the 25 licenses should be used throughout the campus and will have further discussion in future meetings once the software is purchased.
Schedule Next Meeting Date
December 2nd, 2020
Meeting Adjourned at 4:32 PM