September 15, 2020 Delivery WG Call Notes
Contents
Action Items
- Brian and Chris: Check with respective organizations on legal resources for 508 and ADA compliance with training materials
Attendees
Zac, Chris, Sarah, Mary Ann, Kara
Agenda
- Review August action items
- ADA compliance for online training (Ashley Zuco, US EPA)
- Instructors list
- Evaluation update
Call Notes
Review August action item
- Work with MJOs to run RFQ for gathering instructor information
- In process
- Draft sample instructor evaluation questions to drive discussion on next call
- Queried MARAMA and they have an evaluation instrument to share
- Report on ADA compliance knowledge re: online materials @ EPA
- Ashley Zuco to join September call
- Check with Ron Hensley re: ADA compliance
- Ron has an instructor who teaches PPT for CenSARA; as part of the curriculum she has built in the ADA compliance in her lectures
ADA compliance for online training (Ashley Zuco, US EPA)
- EPA is going through the online courses reviewing content
- Let’s keep the scope general: all courses, not just NACT courses
- Need to be aware of all learners, PPT at EPA to training staff
- Checklist and documents being used to review materials
- Visual, hearing, mobility, learning styles, and speech/language differences
- Create a plan to cover disability support before the training is developed; with schedule and materials need to plan for this
- Materials need to be accessible for all disabilities
- There needs to be a text file for everything, to convert to audio files
- Think through these issues ahead of time, and provide to people ahead of time
- Think through support, interpreters or translator, co-teacher/training; virtual training may use chat to access discussion
- Best practice is to put into PDF, e.g., for PPT save PPT as PDF
- Schedule: for live events make sure there are frequent breaks and stick to timeline
- Organize schedule into clear and manageable sections
- PPT, PDF, Word, Captivate are built to support ADA compliance: if you use layouts and templates that are already designed to be used by a screen reader that helps
- Use the accessibility checker in MS software
- Legacy materials will need to be prioritized for updates
- PPT templates will support ADA compliance
- Consider contrast of materials for visually impaired, less decorative
- Jeff: NM DEQ suggests that if the courses are not ADA compliance then no students will be allowed to attend; are MJOs hearing similar experience?
- If MJOs go to hire instructors, and they are requested to be ADA compliant, how do we deal with this?
- From a practical standpoint, do we create accessibility based on the needs of the learner?
- 508 compliance is required by Federal; ADA by local state nonprofit business
- ADA is all accessibility; 508 is only IT content
- Passive approach: address compliance issues as they come up
- EPA is trying to make a good faith effort with legacy materials
- Need to make the compliance of materials more active
- EPA is defining legacy materials as self-instructional courses to make them compliant
- Can we ask instructors to check ADA compliance?
- What happens if we ask them add closed captioning, interpreters.
- What’s the timeline on doing this? When do we need to be compliant
- Next Steps
- Develop a plan
- EPA develops a fact sheet
- MJOs provide plan and fact sheets to trainers
- MJOs include language in their contracts
- Trainings starting at a time in the future to accommodate disability compliance
- This workgroup needs a charge on how to move forward; let’s figure out how to do this together starting with the JTC SC
- How do demonstrate that we’re working toward compliance? Is it a good-faith effort? What is good faith?
- MJOs need to include compliance terms into our contracts
- Parallel effort with live courses for materials and delivery
- Need to get all MJOs together to hear from EPA about what’s required?
- Is Ashley the expert, more on the practical considerations; can EPA bring in a legal perspective as well?
- Brian can check in TX about experts on legal/practical perspective; states are required that everything they put out needs to be compliant
Instructors list
- Update on the review from Jeff and Brian
- Update on the RFQ idea
Evaluation update
- Need to standardize an evaluation for online courses
