CHRISTOPHER SORAN: All right. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the first 2025 edition of the ctcLink Accessibility Forum. Thanks for coming today. Christopher Soran, the Application Support Manager, and co-presenting with me today is Monica. All right. So we're going to talk about the 24-D tax update as well as accessibility web page. So we're going to get started on the tax update. So we got this deployed into production in December. And there was one nice accessibility update. Don't usually get accessibility updates and with the tax changes, but we got one in this one. So it's not a bad thing. So before the tax update, when you would go to the paychecks page, you had to-- there was a pop-up letting you know you'd have to pick your filter dates, and you'd have to hit OK on the pop-up. And then when you got on the page, there was a filter, and I'll share some screenshots here in a second, where you click the button to bring the filter up, and it's another pop-up. So it's just a series of pop-ups that you had to get through to filter out which paychecks you wanted to have on the page. Also, when you would go to the page and your focus would be on the Filter button, it would tell you that the filter toggle button pressed to toggle the state, press Bar, which is really confusing. Doesn't really make much sense. So they made some changes on that page, and I'm going to go ahead and go through them. So the improvements. So what I'm showing here is a screenshot of being on the payroll page and highlighting, selecting the paychecks button. And what you would get is a pop-up that says, instructions. The default view displays paychecks based on pre-applied filters, modified the filters to view a different set of paychecks, and you would hit OK. So this is how it was before. And then when you're on the page, you would select the Filter button, which is where you got that odd message about pressing this the state press bar. And then you get this pop-up where you'd have the cancel and done buttons, and you would select from and to dates. And so that's the output of the text on the page if you're reading it over with a screen reader. So now, there's a screenshot here on the page of the payroll page with selecting the paychecks button. And now on the page, when you get to the paychecks page, it says, the from date and to date are populated with the default date range of three months based on the last issued check date, modified the dates, and select Apply Filters to view a different set of paychecks. So there's not a pop-up when you get to this page to start to let you know that there's a filter. The instructions are just on the page, as well as the filter for the date ranges is on the page as well. So you can just select the date range and hit Apply. And then the selected paychecks that you want are going to appear on that page. So it's not just a series of pop-up, pop-up. It's all on the page. You can access it. There's instructions. You can just tap or mouse-click your way through, and it's a much better experience. So that's a nice little change in the tax update. I'm going to turn it over to Monica. MONICA OLSSON: Awesome. Thanks, Chris. That's great that there's an accessibility improvement on that page and that experience. So thank you for that. I have a few updates to share with the group. We, so we meaning the State Board, folks like myself, Chris, some web page managers, we're working on a new accessibility support page that's going to be a landing spot on the SBCTC website. That's going to include a series of information. As it pertains to this monthly forum, it will be including information about how to request technical accessibility assistance with various applications like ctcLink and others, information on how to report accessibility-related barriers that we would then need to investigate and share with the vendors. And then also just some general information about how to request accommodation services when working with or attending an event with the State Board. And so it's broader than just ctcLink, but information about ctcLink technical assistance and other applications that we're supporting will be on this page. So that's not published yet. Draft is in the works. Some of you may know that we, the State Board, just finished some major updates and redesign to our web page templates. So those of us who have privileges to put content on our web pages, we've been in a freeze for a while. So anyway, this is forthcoming. It's an attempt for us to provide helpful information, resources, technical assistance, and to put it in one landing page so people can go to one spot and see what they need. Do folks have questions about this update? I wanted to share another update as well that's not on the slide, if that's OK with you, Chris. OK. So it's about ctcLink PeopleSoft application accessibility, and also what is-- like, what's up with the Department of Justice ruling and the Web Accessibility requirements that are stated there. So DSSC, Disability Support Services Council, which is very active in their advocacy for an accessible experience for everyone, especially our students, reached out and said, hey, we've got our council meeting coming up. We would like to have some updates around the status of accessibility for ctcLink PeopleSoft, and what's happening behind the scenes with this application and the Department of Justice rulings/bringing it into compliance with WCAG 2.1 AA. There's a couple of things I want to say here. One, I want to remind us all on the call today that, while our system purchased and has adopted this application and we are all using it, and, yes, we have responsibilities around providing as accessible experience as possible, we at the State Board don't develop ctcLink. We are not writing the code and designing the application. So it is a little difficult for us when we get questions like, what are you the State Board doing to ensure ctcLink is fully compliant by the Department of Justice due date? My response to that is, we are continuing the advocacy, the testing, and the meeting with Oracle, just as we have been doing for a number of years up until this point. So our responsibility is to help Oracle understand where we find the accessibility breaks in barriers and push them for resolution and result. We don't have full control over these pages or the code behind the pages. We meaning myself, and Chris, and Padma, Josh, and Vicki. We also don't have the decision authority to use or not use this application. So we're doing our best as conduits of information and accessibility experts and advocates between the colleges and Oracle. So I really hope people hear that message. And that we are working hard to continually strengthen our relationship with Oracle and push them for them to fix their own breaks when they give us updates and patches. With that said, because the Department of Justice has published a landmark ruling that now includes requirements around web and mobile app accessibility, and it points to a technical standard, which it hasn't done in history up until this point, we had a strategy conversation, Chris and I. I looped in Grant, our IT deputy director, and we're going to be reaching out and requesting a meeting with Oracle people and executives to ask them some questions around what their internal understanding of the ruling is and what their response will be as a company to these requirements, considering they serve public sector as well as private sector. So that meeting request is in the works. It is in Grant's hands. I will definitely-- we will definitely bring updates to this monthly forum when we have updates to share and back to DSSC. So those are the two things I wanted to say. I hope, Chris, that encapsulates our conversations accurately. If you have anything else to add, please do so. CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Yeah. That summarizes it. Yeah. That's great. MONICA OLSSON: Mary, do you have a question or comment? MARY GERARD: I do. Thank you for saying that, Monica. This is Mary from Bellingham Technical College. I'm chairing the steering committee here for our WCAG compliance. And what I keep telling people-- and, like, when I first started in this back in the day, I always thought, oh, this is going to be so hard and we have to be perfect. I think what the State Board is doing is fantastic. That you have this history, this lineage of ways that you've been urging this developer to make things accessible. And that goes a long way if there's ever any sort of litigation just to be able to show how you are moving forward. And you are doing a brilliant job at the State Board keeping a little bit of that pressure on PeopleSoft and Oracle. But we're never going to get there because the finish line keeps moving. And that's what I'm trying to tell my institution is that, it's a practice. It's not perfect. We keep moving forward. And if we keep documenting the work that we're doing and keeping accessibility on the front burner, we will be pretty safe as far as any litigation is concerned. So just like you, Monica, I'm asking people to put the brakes on and understand that this isn't on fire. That we'll get there. But big time. MONICA OLSSON: Thanks, Mary. Yeah. We just have to keep putting the pressure on and making incremental progress forward. And when there may be need for individual accommodation, if there's a particular task or something that a student is trying to accomplish within PeopleSoft and barriers exist that are accessibility related, obviously, we want to be documenting those. So we can turn them into tickets and ongoing pressure with the vendor who's responsible for helping us find the fix. And that also means that sometimes there may be a need for that individual accommodation so that we can make sure our students are accomplishing the task. With that said, I do want to also remind us for an update of the last couple of months, that HighPoint with the newest version that we're now on for HighPoint HCX, which is our mobile experience of the student pillar of PeopleSoft. That brings us as close to 2.1 AA compliance for that application as we ever have been before. So there's a more accessible experience, at least, in my opinion, now being offered through HighPoint HCX for the student pillar than we had previously, which is a good thing for us to keep in mind, especially the disability accommodation offices on the ground working with the students. Does anyone else have any questions or comments? I know you all are doing a lot of work right now around accessibility. It's a hot topic. And IT web accessibility is a hot topic on our colleges. OK. Well, thank you, Mary, for your comment. I appreciate it. Turn it back to you, Chris. CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Sounds great. Thanks. So that's actually all the topics we have for today. So feel free to let us know if you want to any topics, any future meetings, happy to add them on, talk through it. Or if you have any questions, just let me know. HUNTER: Hi. Will the recording of this be available? MONICA OLSSON: Hey, Hunter. CHRISTOPHER SORAN: How's it going? HUNTER: It's going good. I only arrived a little late. So if this is available, like, re-uploaded somewhere, is there a place I can go to get that? MONICA OLSSON: Yes. Good question. So it takes us a few business days up to a week to get everything turned back around. The next step for us will be to get captioning on our recording, and then we post the recordings on our ctcLink Accessibility page, along with the slide, the PowerPoint slide deck. So it's there for anyone. And that's all public-facing. HUNTER: All right. Thank you. CHRISTOPHER SORAN: Yeah. The slide deck is already up there. Yeah. We'll just get this captioned, and then the recording posted. Yeah. We're going to-- MONICA OLSSON: Agnes says, thanks for all the work. Thank you, Agnes. CHRISTOPHER SORAN: [INAUDIBLE] MONICA OLSSON: We reckoned-- yeah, progress over perfection, people. That's our theme around the DOJ ruling is we keep forging forward. When you all encounter issues and barriers, please, we would like to be in communication with you all about that so that we can document, test, and send it off to Oracle and keep applying pressure to them. That is how we make the incremental progress that we are making with them. And with that said, I will hopefully come prepared at next month's open forum or the one after that with some updates to share around the conversation that Grant is asking to have. JOSH GIHA: Hey, Monica. I had a quick thing to add onto that incremental progress. I think a good example of that. Back in November, when we talked about the upcoming PeopleTools upgrade that we're actually starting to work on now, that it-- PeopleTools is the underlying framework for ctcLink. Two of the features that are going in there were brought up by a couple members of our team, Padma and Lori, who's no longer on the team. She's retired. But back in 2018, she brought a idea as a feature and has now entered into that-- into this upgrade that we're going to be pushing through this year. So it took six years for that to come through. And then another one that's going to be in this release will be one that Padma actually requested. And that was maybe two years ago, Padma, if I'm-- PADMAJA VILLALON: Yeah. Two, three years ago. JOSH GIHA: Yeah. So some things can have a pretty quick turnaround, relatively speaking, like maybe a month or two if it's a small bug fix. But things that go under the larger framework like PeopleTools can take up to six years as we're seeing. But with the great work like what Padma and Lori did, they kept on Oracle and now it's something that the whole world will benefit from, so, or all their users. Those around the world that use PeopleSoft, so. MONICA OLSSON: Yeah. Because the PeopleTools is like what's under the hood, so to speak, for everyone. So when we make a positive change under the hood, that's going to have, like what Josh is saying, a positive impact for everyone using the product, not just little page fixes or changes that maybe were only benefiting from. So thank you to Padma for your two years of advocacy there. PADMAJA VILLALON: Thank you. Yeah. As we speak, we will be using that additional thing that they have made available. And the problem that we have with multiple jobs with same job title on time pages, that issue will get fixed, which was highlighted many times. And there are-- MONICA OLSSON: Oh, I remember that one. Yeah. PADMAJA VILLALON: Yes. So I'm working on that right now. So something to look forward to. CHRISTOPHER SORAN: It's fun to see these things we've been advocating for finally come to fruition. Yeah. Just patience, persistence. Keep pushing on it. We'll get them there eventually. One ticket at a time. We'll keep pushing them, so yeah. So thanks, Padma and Josh. So appreciate everybody coming today. Thanks for your time, everyone. See ya same time, same place next month. MONICA OLSSON: Yep. See you all in a month. Thanks for everyone who was here. Thanks, Chris. Short and sweet. Bye.