Meeting Minutes

February 10, 2009

Campus Disability Awareness and Action Committee- Initial Meeting (Renamed the Disability Planning and Action Committee (DPAC))
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
12:00-1:00 p.m.

Present: Marcella David, Sue Buckley, Kevin Ward, Tiffini Stevenson Earl, Jennifer Modestou, Susan Johnson, Mark Harris, David Fitzgerald, Kim Carter

The meeting began with introductions around the table followed by reactions to the Disability Awareness Summit. The draft charge to the committee was reviewed, edited and finalized. Mark, Tiffini, Jan and Jamie prepared the draft charge. To avoid confusion with groups with similar names or initials, the name of the committee was changed from Campus Disability Awareness and Action Committee (CDAAC) to Disability Planning and Action Committee (DPAC)

For Spring 2009, three priorities were identified:

Planning a spring Disability Awareness Summit
Develop a protocol for welcoming to our community faculty and staff who have disabilities and may need accommodation, and connecting them to resources
Participating in the university’s budget reduction process to be aware of the impact on our disability inclusion efforts

A DPAC website will be developed to introduce the committee and its mission and to summarize minutes/matters under discussion.
Action items from the Disability Awareness Summit:

Nite ride buses/handicapped accessible?
Marcella David met with Chuck Green. They discussed that the Bionic Bus requires drivers that are trained to assist patrons in, have appropriate licensure, and must be able to fit in areas. They are getting a new bus with a center aisle that will help. They will also respond to individualized inquiries by providing alternative transportation at the expense of police department or have door to door (information will be on website next week and included in spring message to students)
Accessible programs available on public computers
Marcella David met with Steve Fleagle. One challenge is that those computers viewed as public are not under ITS purview and there are no overall standards. There is a group scheduled to meet to discuss this issue. It was suggested that if we could get a university license, then it could be pushed out to departments to install at no additional cost.
Location of Student Disability Services
Currently located in the basement of Burge. Marcella David spoke with Tom Rocklin. SDS is moving in June to a better part of the Burge basement. It will be centrally located, convenient to where students live, have elevator access. Mark Harris is not aware of any student complaints. It will look nice, professional and have signage at key places. It was suggested that SDS might work something out with the desk entrance so that they contact SDS if someone needs/wants assistance to get to office.
Accessible administrative surveys
Jan Gorman is working with a committee on this issue and will report next meeting.
Accessible websites
Marcella David checked with Josh Kaine and those pages put out by central administration are compliant. If we want overall compliance, an additional staff member may be needed. Many self publish and if we say they are doing it wrong, we need to have resources to tell them how to do it right as an interim step. It was decided to ask Steve Fleagle and Josh Kaine to come to a future CDAAC meeting to discuss further.
Issue of how do we determine the needs of newly hired faculty and staff who need accommodation
It may be possible to develop language to add to offer letter inviting them to notify of needed accommodations (must be in offer or post offer). The discussion of this topic led to the identification of this issue as a priority for spring 2009.

Other items discussed. There is RFP out for Momentum Plus. This is the last year of this initiative which has a small pool of money to do diversity research/outreach. This year they are challenged to use for disability research or outreach and recipients must participate in a seminar.
This committee will meet monthly.

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March 12 , 2009

Disability Planning and Action Committee
Thursday, March 12, 2009
3:00-4:00 p.m.

Present: Marcella David, Jan Gorman, Mark Harris, Susan Johnson, Jamie Jorgensen, Jennifer Modestou, Tom Rocklin, Tiffini Stevenson Earl, Kevin Ward

Guest Presenters: Wendy Brown, Chris Clark, Steve Fleagle, Josh Kaine

Web accessibility:
The meeting began with a presentation from our guests, representatives from Information Technology Services and University Relations, about the university’s efforts to provide accessible web content. The challenge presented by the web is its main virtue: that it makes the ability to disseminate information open to more people. That openness makes it difficult to regulate content or standards of accessibility. It was estimated that there are over 10,000,000 pages on the university site. It was noted, in addition, that standards of accessibility are constantly evolving. Currently the goal of the university webmaster is to ensure that the main university webpage, the pages that are linked off of the main page, key collegiate and departmental pages, and web-based administrative applications are accessible.

Given the number of pages, it is not feasible to retrofit established web architecture; it is more feasible to respond to specific needs (assuring users know how to communicate needs), and to foster a culture of awareness and support in the development of new and revised pages and applications (over a period of time the older pages will be replaced with accessible new pages). Previous recommendations have included adding dedicated staff to focus on accessibility; that option was discussed again. In addition other options discussed were: 1) an aggressive awareness campaign; 2) set up a review process prioritizing pages viewed most or that serve to provide access to the University and its services, as well as business, human resources, purchasing and other interactive applications; 3) providing technical professional development for local webmasters; 4) providing technical assistance for the development of new pages and redesigns of older sites; 5) expanding the circle of web pages currently reviewed centrally; 6) establishing purchasing protocols that include accessibility checks; and 7) including accessibility standards in university relations standards.

The committee will continue to gather information and recommend action.

Priority Assistance Program
The committee discussed the Priority Assistance Program in light of changes to the ADA. FSDS and Human Resources will report further at the April meeting.

Spring Disability Summit
Due to the current budgetary limitations, the committee decided to defer until fall semester plans for a spring Disability Awareness Summit, which included bringing a speaker, Andrew Imparato, to campus. The subcommittee planning the summit was asked to discuss other options for a spring gathering with the Council for Disability Awareness.

The next meeting is planned for April, and will include a discussion of facilities.

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April 7 , 2009

Disability Planning and Action Committee
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
12-1:30 p.m.
UCC Exec. Board Room

Present: Marcella David, Kevin Ward, Sue Buckley, Susan Johnson, David Fitzgerald, Mark Harris, Jennifer Modestou, Tiffini Stevenson Earl, Jamie Jorgenson, Jan Gorman

Guest: Don Guckert, Dan Heater, Bob Hradek, Brian Manternach (Facilities Management), Lesley Irizarry (Faculty & Staff Disability Services Ph.D. Intern)

FACILITIES PRIORITIES

The committee began by discussing current building accessibility issues and how those issues are addressed. In responding to specific requests for accommodation, in addition to available resources, other aspects that are considered include the impact of the accommodation on other standards (e.g., as building counts for restroom fixtures arising from zoning ordinances) and available space.

The committee discussed the term compliant & what it means. “Compliant” is moving target, with standards changing over time. There are ADA architectural guidelines that go to great detail to dimensions/contrast/door handles/door pressure – every building built after 1992 should be fully compliant with those standards. University standards often go beyond. For example, University design standards require one entrance to have a power door (not required under ADAAG). While an individual’s workplace may not be covered by ADAAG, the University attempts to meet their need.

The question was asked “If we are going to be compliant with ADAAG (for structures built prior to 1992) across campus, what would it take?” Full renovation to every building across campus– restrooms, handles, doors, elevators, signage, etc was identified a couple years ago at $16 million; now more like a $20 million challenge. In older buildings, if the University is undertaking a renovation, it is only required to make the altered portion compliant but we often do more in response to a need; with accommodations that are situation driven.

What would we need to do to undertake a systematic strategic process?
Funding and risk assessment would be needed. It would require a large budget with many buildings in priority & number of years to complete (length of program dependent on funding). Decision would be needed to proceed by building by building or by category.

For all buildings that will be rebuilt or substantially renovated (and not just repaired) because of the flood, FEMA and insurance recovery will, to a certain extent, help fund ADA updates.

We are looking at an increasing number of student veterans and the University may want to market to respond to their needs. Being proactive, if accommodating, might be more attractive to faculty and staff as well as students.

The committee asked FSG to come back & possibly include Doug True in a future meeting. (In email discussion later that week, the committee asked FSG to appoint a member to DPAC, and Dan Heater was selected.)

Currently, contacts regarding ADA facilities accommodation issues are:
Public sector/campus visitors: Tiffini Stevenson Earl
Faculty/Staff: Jan Gorman
Students: Mark Harris

ADA Referral & Assistance Program
The committee was introduced to the employee ADA Referral & Assistance Program proposal. The program provides employees with referral and job placement assistance for 90 days . The current program’s success needs adjustments to make it more effective.
The committee discussed the planned enhancements:

Continue to work with department or unit to provide work of value & pay during this time, if available;
Add networking opportunities for P and S staff;
For all employees (merit & P&S), employeeidentifies a position & if the employee meets minimum requirements, Sr. HR Rep refers the employee to department & department must interview.
To enhance opportunities and make searches faster, we would no longer shut down position search.

The pros of this program are that it keeps people employed & productive and creates a culture that values that continued employment. The committee was invited to provide any further comments to Jan.

UPDATES
Jennifer M: Last time reps from ITS and University Relations web Groups met with DPAC. In the interim Jennifer heard that the employee self serve site and the external anti harassment course don’t work well with some readers. The self serve site is locally designed, the external anti-harassment course was certified to be compliant. The explanation by the external vendor is that the standards and reader software changed in the interim. They are being asked to update the software as soon as possible.

Marcella D: Mark Hale of ITS is planning a summer camp for webmasters for web accessibility. As part of the planning it is agreed that it is also important to have a session for deans/org leaders.

Next steps:
The committee will begin process to identify needs, sense of priorities to request funding from VP for Finance & Operations and stimulus funding.

The committee would like to invite the president to talk with the committee about some policy issues & direction; however the committee needs to continue to work to frame issues before that meeting.

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May 18 , 2009

Disability Planning & Action Committee
Monday, May 18, 2009
B5 JH

Present: Marcella David, Dan Heater, Mark Harris, Kim Carter, David Fitzgerald, Tom Rocklin, Tiffini Stevenson-Earl, Jennifer Modestou, Susan Johnson, Jan Gorman, Jamie Jorgenson, Sue Buckley, Kevin Ward

Guest: Mark Hale (ITS), Dan Heater was welcomed as a new memer of the group.

FACILITIES PRIORITIES
Dan Heater presented on access questions as they relate to campus facilities. He prioritized several important points for consideration:

accessibility to higher education
focus on compliance
levels of compliance
determining who sets standards

The Iowa Promise states as a goal creating a more welcoming & accessible environment for faculty, staff, students, and visitors w/ disabilities. Disability can be temporary (ie: crutches due to an injury). The Charge: to advance our efforts toward greater accessibility at the UI
A successful plan would include: resources (people & funding); promotion & education; and partnerships (e.g., between parking & transportation, students, faculty, staff, facilities mgmt).

As a start, specific needs were discussed and mapped that would lead to a welcoming campus, if implemented with consistent and ongoing funding.

Possible funding sources were considered, including submitting an ARRA funding request to Doug True & Wallace Loh to jump start progress this year Jennifer, Jan, Dan, David, Mark agreed to join Marcella in a subgroup to write an ARRA Funding Proposal.

WEB ACCESSIBILITY
Mark Hale discussed plans for the upcoming Summer Conference on Web Access. –The conference will convene campus webmasters for a web accessibility workshop with primary presenter coming from WebAIM – one of leading voices on accessibility. The primary audience would be campus administrators, designers of websites, people maintaining websites, people writing web applications (ISIS, SRIS, etc) with follow-up activities with a smaller group.

Proposed dates: June 16-17, however, large rooms difficult to find for those dates. Other dates are being considered. The conference is being funded by ITS & the Special Assistant to the President for Equal Opportunity & Diversity and Associate Provost for Diversity. Expected attendance of approximately 150-200 attendees.

It was decided to invite Deans/administrators to a meeting either at the end of the conference or after the conference to give opportunity for their staff to brief them & get concrete feedback. Their technical staff should attend this meeting as well.

Web AIM begins with awareness of what the issue is – how screen readers work, other accessibility issues, legal issues, how to design to avoid problems, more technical aspects as the learning progresses. Web AIM also license materials to teach.

This conference will be marketed via the Web Masters group, deans will be asked to encourage staff to attend. Kim will produce a flyer and help market.

Browse Aloud – one of several screen readers that will read a page to you – is available to the University for a one year opportunity to test out. It is available as a free download.

CAMPUS PRIORITIES
Wallace Loh and Doug True met with the committee to discuss some already identified priorities. Provost Loh and VP True agreed that it would be good for the committee to have a strategic plan to build and develop momentum.

Some points raised by the committee:

DPAC is a response to a need and to identify what can we do to improve. We need to have a long-term plan, resources; the plan must be tied to commitment of resources and to this issue as a priority.
We tend to see disabilities as visible, but half are non-visible disabilities. Access to SDS (suggested was another electric door opener or consideration of a separate elevator) to greatly improve accessibility & commitment.
Somehow need to give individuals a role to ensure that their voice is heard.

We need strong policy statements and vetting processes to refer to when there is a question of resources.

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June 8, 2009

Disability Planning & Action Committee
Monday, June 8, 2009
2390 UCC Executive Board Room

Present: Sue Buckley, Marcella David, Jamie Jorgensen, Kevin Ward, Dan Heater, Mark Harris, Jan Gorman, Tiffini Stevenson Earl, Jennifer Modestou, David Fitzgerald, Tom Rocklin

Guests: Jerry Mount, Mike Venzon, Larry Wilson

FACILITIES AND WAYFINDING DISCUSSION
ARRA proposal on behalf of DPAC was submitted. The ARRA review committee reportedly received 188 proposals and they hope to make decisions by end of month.

Way-finding and Navigation on Campus (Jerry Mount, Larry Wilson, Mike Venzon)
Jerry Mount introduced the idea of context-driven Pedestrian Routing, based on a graduate research project. Context is a set of relationships that are pertinent to the task at hand - not just environment but relationship to environment. This would allow a person to set parameters for point to point travel (e.g., no stairs, no gradient of more than 5%) and get personalized directions for moving around campus. This system is dynamic, emergent – assists production of viable outcomes in spatial & visual; it adapts the outcome to current state. The system can be updated in real time (ie: can update based on construction/obstructions in real time). The system is designed to promote accessibility to areas on campus for those without explicit knowledge of our campus but could benefit anyone.

It would be an open service for anyone to use but particularly for mobility limited or visually limited individuals. A pilot system is being tested.

To fully deploy would require digitizing the rest of the campus, designing interfaces and adding additional modifiers to complete program.

Larry Wilson and Mike Venzon presented the work of a campus committee on developing a way-finding system for the campus. This system is mainly aimed at new-comers & visitors to campus. It begins by directing them first to a ramp than via pedestrian routes.

While looking at our current signage, one of the competitive disadvantages UI has is that we don’t have a main entrance to campus (as does UNI, for example)– access to campus is possible from so many different directions, that it is difficult to place campus “welcome” information.

The committee is also considering disability access signage and way-finding. Specifically with regard to disability access, the primary limitation of current labeling is that it relies heavily on bus system and program accessibility (bringing program to accessible place).

Project is awaiting approval, and would proceed incrementally. There is a need for an additional accessibility outing study for best locations for accessibility signs.

An additional discussion by Mike Venzon about mapping, based on the models of University of Texas/University of Wisconsin was deferred to a later session due to time considerations..

Other Business
In order to engage those most directly affected by these decisions, the committee considered using regularly scheduled forums or focus groups to help prioritize activities.

Agenda for next meeting: review proposals & priorities, and plan focus group discussions.

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July 2, 2009

Disability Planning & Action Committee
Thursday, July 2, 2009
2390 UCC Executive Board Room

Present: Sue Buckley, Marcella David, Jan Gorman, Mark Harris, Dan Heater, Susan Johnson, Jamie Jorgensen, Tom Rocklin, Tiffini Stevenson Earl, Mike Venzon, Kevin Ward, Kim Carter

ARRA REQUEST UPDATE
The appointed review panel has sorted and ranked the many applications and has submitted this information to Doug True and Wallace Loh. They are to meet with the President next week and, hopefully, the decisions will be announced shortly thereafter.

DPAC Priorities and Ways to solicit broader participation from larger community
The committee reviewed what has been presented and discussed to date. Out of these discussions, the following priorities and small groups were assigned:

IT Accessibility – Mike Venzon (convener), Tom Rocklin, Jennifer Modestou
Facilities and Way-finding – Dan Heater (convener), Jamie Jorgensen, Jan Gorman, David Fitzgerald
Communications, Education, Programming and Development – Tiffini Stevenson Earl (convener), Mark Harris, Kevin Ward, Sue Buckley
Academic Programs – Susan Johnson, Marcella David

The Strategic Plan Statement was tabled at this time until further information on these priorities had been gathered.

These groups will meet to produce a case for action – what do we need to do and why we need to do it. They have been requested to develop a 2 year or 5 year plan (may increase in increments of 2 years not to exceed a 10 year plan). These groups should seek feedback from the leadership of that area, the members of the affected group, and the university as a whole.

In addition to these groups, it was agreed that some research regarding bench-marking best practices would be very helpful. What have schools known to be accommodating do? Did they do research; how much initial resources were needed; what factors needed to be considered? Jan Gorman is to start this process, and refer information to relevant groups as appropriate.

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