[Athen] Microsoft Accessibility Collaboration Opportunities

[Bishop, Jeff - (jeffbis)]

I would love to participate in both efforts if at all possible.

 

Thank you.

 

Jeff Bishop

IT Accessibility Analyst

University of Arizona

 

From: athen-list [mailto:athen-list-bounces at mailman13.u.washington.edu] On
Behalf Of Hadi Rangin
Sent: Wednesday, April 06, 2016 3:38 PM
To: Access Technology Higher Education Network <athen-list at u.washington.edu>
Subject: [Athen] Microsoft Accessibility Collaboration Opportunities

 

Hello friends & colleagues,

 

As you know, together we were able to improve the accessibility/usability of
many products in the past 10-12 years. We collaborate successfully with many
vendors for higher education including Blackboard, Desire2Learn, Moodle,
Instructure, Elsevier, Ebsco Publishing, Elluminate, Qualtrics, Trumba,
ServiceNow, and many more.

 

In 2013 a couple of colleagues of mine from UIUC and I tested & evaluated
Microsoft Lync and Outlook. We shared the results with them and wanted to
engage them in similar collaboration efforts as we have with all other
vendors but we were unable to do it as their NDA terms and conditions were
not acceptable to the UIUC legal team. As the result, we never had the
chance to discuss our findings with the respective product development
teams. 

 

The good news is that they have used our findings about Outlook and Lync to
improve their accessibility in their latest versions. I don't know at this
time how much of our recommendations have been utilized in the latest
version but I am glad that they have at least considered them.

 

Last week a couple of my UW-IT colleagues and I had a productive meeting
with JJ Cadiz, the head of program management for Desktop Outlook and
principal owner of accessibility for all the Outlook clients and a few
colleagues of his team. We discussed how we could collaborate and contribute
to the accessibility of Microsoft products.

 

To be honest with you, I have never seen Microsoft so motivated to work with
the accessibility community toward improving the accessibility of their
products, and I would like to use this opportunity to establish a
constructive and productive collaboration with them.

 

We are working to establish two parallel groups that will be working with
Microsoft on accessibility of their products. This is a rare opportunity for
us to get involved and shape the accessibility of the products that we all
have been using in hopes of changing the culture of accessibility at
Microsoft.


1. Microsoft Collaboration Group


Microsoft Collaboration Group is a long-term project to extensively improve
Microsoft Office family products. Some of the products in question are
Outlook client, OWA, SharePoint, Office 365, etc.

 

*         Purpose:

o   Establish a long-lasting, sleek, and energetic collaboration group with
Microsoft.

o   Select one product at a time, identify accessibility/usability issues,
and discuss the findings with the respective Microsoft development team. 

*         Commitment: 

o   Have knowledge and experience in accessibility and accessible design.

o   Are interested in collaborating on accessibility of MS products.

o   Can dedicate minimum of 5 hours in a month.

 

This collaboration involves accessibility/usability testing and evaluation
and reporting on the products that we choose. We will finalize the logistics
once we have the 10 members.

 


2. Mac Outlook Project


Mac Outlook Project is a project focusing specifically on Mac Outlook. We
want five folks use it as their everyday, primary mail client. We expect to
have Mac Outlook insider builds available for a long time.

*         Purpose:

o   Provide direct feedback to Mac Outlook Engineering Team about the
accessibility and design of the product.

*         Commitment:

o   Be an everyday user of Mac Outlook who's living on the insider builds.

o   Provide ten to fifteen minute feedback on rare (maybe one per month)
design changes.

o   Available for the occasional (once every 3 months) 1-hour call.

 

Time commitment would be for as long as folks are willing to participate.   

 

If you are interested to join either of these collaboration groups, please
let me know.

 

Thanks,

Hadi

 

 

 

Hadi Rangin

IT Accessibility Specialist

Mary Gates Hall 064C

University of Washington

Phone: (206) 685-4144

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman12.u.washington.edu/pipermail/athen-list/attachments/20160407/c5852aaa/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: smime.p7s
Type: application/pkcs7-signature
Size: 5716 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mailman12.u.washington.edu/pipermail/athen-list/attachments/20160407/c5852aaa/attachment.p7s>