E09: Smart Campus Maturity Model Profiles

Explore Illinois University's groundbreaking Smart Campus Maturity Model, providing valuable insights for universities seeking to enhance technological infrastructure, promote inclusion, and improve accessibility across campus.

Transcript

00:03 Speaker: 

Please welcome James Thurston and Keith Hayes. James is the vice president for G3ict the global initiative for inclusive information and communication technologies promoting the rights of persons with disabilities in the digital age. Keith is the ADA IT coordinator in the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. The mission of the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion of the OVCDEI is to use the transformational power of our university to lead our campus toward an increasingly diverse and inclusive community that is open, just and welcoming for all. Today, they will be looking at how leveraging accessibility and inclusion can provide an adaptive and accessible multimodal IT ecosystem to support campuses. Keith will review findings digital inclusion gaps, next steps for improvements at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign and more. 

01:14 James Thurston: 

I'm James, vice president here at G3ict and I'm joined today by Keith Hayes who is the ADA IT coordinator in the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. Our goal with this session is to share some details about the University of Illinois approach to being more accessible in a more inclusive university. And I've been really keep looking forward to this discussion with you because I think a lot of people know that the University of Illinois has a long history of leadership and commitment to accessibility, inclusion, dating back really to providing accommodations to soldiers after the Second World War. The university does a lot of accessibility and inclusion things really well and is, I think, really generous with its expertise and Keith with your expertise to the greater global accessibility community. We appreciate that and I'm looking forward to exploring some of that with you this morning. Keith, and I want to surface and share some what we think are valuable and actionable experiences from his experience and from the U of I's experience that hopefully will apply to you and inform some of your own higher education accessibility journey steps. This session today is the fourth in the IAAP six-part higher education series. It's also the second of the final three sessions that relate to or our source from some work that G3ict has been doing with higher education institutions using our smart University Digital Inclusion Maturity Model tool. Before we jump in with Keith, let me just give you some maybe some brief context about that tool, which kind of informs our discussion and in the work that we've been doing with the university, it is really the basis for our G3ict engagement with U of I. In by extension, I guess for some of the lessons and actions that we'll discuss today. The smart University Digital Inclusion maturity model is an assessment and benchmarking tool to help the university better understand how its digital transformation, that’s how it's using technology, how its using data is either supporting accessibility and inclusion of people with disabilities. That's in faculty, staff and students or creating additional barriers to that inclusion and support. The assessment tool is made up of 28 different variables, we call them enablers, and that really define what it means for university to be inclusive as a chosing technology. These variables are enablers contribute to the university's building a set of capabilities that support greater inclusion and accessibility across the university community. In our tool to our maturity model tool, we have defined 18 core capabilities that are listed here. And they're organized into the five groups or pillars. So, with the tool, we look at things like the role of leadership, the existence or non-existence of a digital inclusion strategy, how does that relate to the broader IT strategy of the university? We look at the accessibility of the university's engagement tools. It's the accessibility of information that it puts out in content. We look at whether or not the university's promoting a culture of diversity and what that looks like in terms of training on disability and accessibility in hiring people with disabilities. We look at procurement, how does the university go about investing in its technology assets and deploying those? Is accessibility a requirement in those procurements? And how does it ensure that accessibility is a part of its purchases? And of course, we also dig into technology and data. The backbone and lifeblood of a smart university and really look at how the university knows whether or not it's technology assets, its technology deployments are accessible and what does it do and what not. So, it's a pretty robust sort of issues. And we use this maturity model tool with Keith and with the University of Illinois. Last year, I forgot exactly what time of year it was in, Microsoft actually brought us into work with the University of Illinois as one of their customers. In during the process of using this tool, these 28 variables are enablers and 18 capabilities working with Keith, we reviewed more than 20 different documents. The university did an online self-assessment where staff gave their opinions of where they fall on these variables. And we also ended up pulling together an expert team to interview and work with talk to more than 40 different University of Illinois faculty and staff over a couple of days to really dig into these variables. The result was a set of scores for each of these 28 variables. And I think more importantly, in kind of leading into our conversation today was a roadmap, which is a set of recommendations, high priority recommendations and then really a set of recommendations for each of these 28 variables that so if you're at level two, for your procurement process, to get to levels, three, four and five, we suggest you take these very specific steps. The University of Illinois did relatively strong as to all universities, we've used this tool with several universities. And U of I did relatively well on some of these enablers or variables, and room for opportunity for growth and improvement on others. Certainly, in the leadership category, I think the university did relatively well. And some of the areas are for real improvements. I think we're around the use of data and metrics procurement in partnerships. So that's sort of an overview background of how G3ict came to work with Keith in the University of Illinois. Keith let's jump in now hear from you, which is why we're all here. He tells us a little bit about the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, I know you're just telling me there's a I guess a right order and a wrong order to the town name, a little bit about it in a general sense of the technology, technology landscape there without getting into accessibility just yet. 

07:11 Keith Hayes: 

Sure. Well, as James has eluded, the most important thing is that we know the townies from the students, by the way, they refer to Urbana Champaign. See if those of us who live in the town, call it Champaign Urbana, and the students come and call it Urbana Champaign. So, we know immediately their students, and we need to possibly offer them directions, or other things they might need. So, speaking of students, last fall, we had more than 52,000 students enroll. 33,000 of those were undergraduates and almost 18,000 were graduate students. And then we have about 1000 professional students and postdocs, etc. To manage that we have about 15,000 faculty and staff, almost 3000, our faculty, and another 11 and a half nonacademic staff. We have 16 colleges, and five or so nonacademic support units. And those will come into play later so, I'll just name them. We have the Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning, which is responsible for instructional design for assisting with classroom innovation, such as some of the newer, smart and blended classroom technologies. And then also, they manage our learning management systems and help instructors create online courses are open online of things we use. And then also Blackboard or we call it campus, Canvas Moodle. We also have Technology Services managing most of the large enterprise software in campus, but not all of it. And that's an interest big create an interesting conundrum. We also have facilities and services which manage our GIS data for accessible routes on campus and they also help with accommodations for our accessible facilities for students with disability resources, educational services, or Dres. They manage student accommodations, and they operate out of Applied Health Sciences. And then we have the office for Access and Equity, which manages accommodations for staff and faculty and that's in the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. That is where you'll find our ADA coordinator and me ADA IT coordinator and the ADEA division of OAE we call it but it's also a dual role because we are also through the vice chancellor's office simply responsible for all of campus. 

09:59 James Thurston: 

I know when we had first met there were some relatively recent restructuring and changes in the positive sense, can you talk a little bit about from an organizational perspective, which is one of the things that we look at and work on with, with universities, some of the changes there and including, I think your, your current role. 

10:20 Keith Hayes: 

Certainly. Well, three years ago, almost four, now, there was no vice chancellor for diversity, equity inclusion, the office did not exist. And they decided to reorganize and create three different positions. So, we have an Associate Vice Chancellor for compliance, who's under the DEI, now the Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity inclusion, and then there's the DEI himself. So, two years ago, a year and a half now our ADA coordinator position was created. That's Alison Kushner. And she, as I said, manages the OAE, as well as collecting metrics and things for off campus and coordinating campus accessibility efforts. My position was created in September of last year. And that is the ADA IT coordination. That's the component that I've been working towards for eight years now, to get this position in place, and it followed the creation of our accessibility policy in 2018. But correction ratification of that policy, the post was created in 2016. 

11:32 James Thurston: 

So really, some important things come together all at once. And I know you've been active on these issues and at the University for a long time. I think one of the other interesting things about the University of Illinois is, that others may relate to as well, that it's both a very large campus. You are, but you also as university and maybe Keith, even you, in your role, play key roles as part of a state university system as well. Can you just maybe describe that a little bit? 

12:02 Keith Hayes: 

Certainly. So, we exist within the Illinois State system. So, we have three campuses, there's the U of I, Springfield, there's U of I Chicago, and then there's Urbana. And with those three campuses, they have counterparts of each one, each school is a slightly different focus as far as what they do. Springfield is the smallest; Urbana is the largest. And what I have ended up doing is helping with some coordination between all three campuses, along with my counterparts, we're looking at creating parity with our policies and approach to accessibility, especially digital accessibility. There has been that type of coordination with our physical access, or disability services coordinators, since I've been on campus, it really picked up in 2014, I believe 2015. But it's been there for a while, there's regular meetings. So we're looking at procurement across the system, we're looking at resource allocation, we're looking at the possibility of shared procurement for large software, we do have there's AITS, or the academic Instructional Technology Services, that is at the system level, they manage the and I have created a lot of the identity management software, banner, and just the typical types of things that are going to be used across all three campuses that they need coordination on. And so that system office has been interesting. That's where I started working with the system is working with AITS and their accessibility. It's been a neat transformation, because when I started, they didn't have it as a requirement for the things they created. And now it's required in every project. 

13:54 James Thurston: 

Are you seeing a real opportunity that I think in interacting with some of the other campuses, maybe already seeing some of the benefits of that? Even looking forward? Do you sense a sort of shared level of commitment and in wanting to take steps further with some of your colleagues at the other campuses? 

14:12 Keith Hayes: 

Oh, yes. Yes, it's, the more in sync we are, the stronger are the response to accessibility. 

14:20 James Thurston: 

Absolutely. And we certainly know about, obviously other universities that are part of a university system, other campuses, but even some universities that are just coordinating with other colleges and universities around them. They're not part of a system but coordinating on accessibility specifically and getting benefit from that. So, it's great to hear you helping to drive that forward within the university system there. Keith, before we go on to the first sort of substantive question about your journey there at the university. If we look at what you’ve talked about the university system, we've certainly talked about the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign. I'm from a way so I'll say it that way. There are some, when we looked at the organization in had conversations with you and your colleagues at the University, there are a couple, I think, really interesting committees that came up that maybe I might just want to touch on one was Tark. And the other was that CCRA. I think I'm forgetting what the acronym stands for CCAA. CCAA. Yes. 

15:23 Keith Hayes: 

Yeah. Okay, well, I'll start with CCAA, that's the Chancellor's committee on accessibility and accommodation. So CCAA was created to coordinate across campus, some of our programmatic access. So, we were looking at issues with physical access, helping update our ADA Transition Plan, and ensuring that we had good physical access there. And that was up to date. We also just sponsored awareness raising workshops, met with individual faculty who had ideas or who had concerns and thoughts at one point. We sponsored a project on adding wheelchair accessible controls to elevators, so just several elevators that were old enough to not have accessible controls. And so, I think we installed around 10 different elevators on campus, it was a neat project. So that's kind of what CCAA does. They were on hiatus for a year, and they're being reconstituted this coming year. So, we'll see how that goes. And we have the technology accessibility review committee, or the TARC, we call it. The TARC was created by the digital accessibility policy on campus. Their role is education, about the policy, assisting to raise awareness that it exists, and to support my efforts and Allison's efforts. So, the idea of coordinators, and then they're primarily to review exception requests for compliance. Any software that comes to campus must be reviewed for accessibility with the policy states, we need to meet WCAG 2.0 matching section five away, and Illinois IT Accessibility Act. And if it cannot, then they must submit an exception request for us to review it, approve the need for the exception and approve their alternative access plan. 

17:37 James Thurston: 

So, like you, I think we'll talk about some other structures, some other committees in a moment. But what you have there at the University are some actively engaged in some like reengaging committees that can be supportive as you're trying to drive a shift in both culture and in adding more systems and processes that are support accessibility inclusion from an IT perspective. 

18:02 Keith Hayes: 

That’s aptly put it, yes.  

18:05 James Thurston: 

Great. So, let's dive in maybe to some of exactly what you're doing there, which is pretty exciting, I think. When we first met and did our engagement with the University of Illinois, we were at that point pretty deep into the pandemic. Maybe you can talk a little bit about how the pandemic has impacted how you specifically in your role, but also the university obviously, look at an act on accessibility? 

18:31 Keith Hayes: 

Certainly. Well, first, it kicked over the ant hill, and caused a lot of scurrying most. When we knew we were going to be shut down, we suspended most projects and focused on the preparing for the transfer to remote instruction. And our faculty were very perplexed. CITL managed, assisting them, the Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning. But what it did, it immediately cast into relief some of the issues with our digital accessibility on campus. We knew we would have to find virtual classroom technology that would scale. We utilize Zoom for that, and we purchased a license to Otter AI. This is before Zoom integrated Otter, for automated captioning, and increased visibility of the need for captions for accommodation. In general, people were more willing to ask the questions, is this going to cause an accessibility issue? Sometimes they were willing to ask that question after I reached out to them and said, hey, have you considered accessibility, realizing that they would not have the resources that they did in the past because students weren't on campus. Then it made it more imperative for them to make things accessible. The technology services were handling a lot of that and AITS and then CITL, they were fairly willing to begin with, it was just a matter of reprioritizing a little bit due to the immediate need. 

20:10 James Thurston: 

It's great that people were reaching out, maybe in reaction to communications from you, but maybe proactively, without obviously giving names or roles necessarily. Can you talk a little bit about who was reaching out and about what it was primarily from the academic side of the university or administrative as well. 

20:31 Keith Hayes: 

I'd say it was primarily administrative. We had the deputy CIO, who manages Technology Services, reach out on issues. And then I was still embedded within Technology Services at the time, as was my colleague, Tim Oftensteen, who has since retired. And we were managing accessibility consulting across campus. So, we had some people approach us about their websites, which we then connected to other people. We had the TARC and Alison Kushner, the ADA Coordinator, come and talk to us. CITL, they were talking to us about classroom technologies for and issues with Blackboard and campus to ensure that or rather compass and Moodle to ensure that worked well. Faculty mostly approach disability services, so they dress to ask about accommodation and what they need to do. But just in general, there was just a little more coordination than had been there in the past. 

21:29 James Thurston: 

You mentioned some of our conversations about some of the specific things that I think during the pandemic, as you were thinking about making accessibility a part of the blended remote learning approach and evangelizing that supporting that across the campus, some of the interesting steps that  you may have taken, you mentioned, there was a seminar series ADA 30 seminar series, and maybe the work of the communications unit. Can you talk a little bit about some of those specific ways that you are maybe, evangelizing interest in accessibility? 

22:08 Keith Hayes: 

You mentioned the ADA 30 series that the ADA Coordinator created, inspired by the 30-year anniversary of ADA. We started a monthly brown bag seminar, virtual seminar that people could attend, where they would learn about the compilation process at the university accessibility in general, things needed for accessible documents, etc. Until I was able to get captioning, automatic captioning turned on by default and profiles for zoom hosts, we were talking about that process as well. So, but that was another thing is because of the pandemic we worked on, on the Zoom, getting out and captioning turned on, because by default, you had to go into your profile and enable it prior to starting a meeting, 

22:56 James Thurston: 

How do you feel about where you are today, from the remote learning approach? Maybe, specifically, and maybe a little bit of an assessment where you think you are now and looking forward in this area, specifically, in the steps that you're looking at taking? 

23:17 Keith Hayes: 

Sure. Well, one of the things we're looking at doing is finding a new proctoring solution. One of the issues we had there made the news that we opted not to renew Proctorial. We, contrary to what someone was reported, that wasn't primarily because of accessibility, but that was a consideration. And the reality is that they're as near as we can tell, there aren't any proctoring solutions, remote practice solutions that are fully accessible. There are issues with most of them. If anyone knows of one that's fully accessible, please contact me, we are looking for one. So that's one thing where we're just looking at increasing that support. We are looking at reviewing our accommodation procedures to streamline them for remote instruction and students who are not in campus. They were geared entirely for in-person assessment and evaluation of paperwork that way. So that's not working as well as we would like. I think our accommodation process has slowed down to roughly two thirds to half the speed it was before, and we are just continuing conversation with more instruction with faculty for how they make sure that their presentations are accessible. Because it's not just a matter of having an assessable tool, you have to know how to use it in a way that for example, if I'm lecturing and sharing a PowerPoint, if I don't describe what is showing on screen, then someone who is blind won't know. And that was the same in the classroom as well. But it's a little more poignant now that we have the remote environment. 

24:58 James Thurston: 

With faculty for example, how has that been received? The increased focus or maybe your sense of urgency even about accessibility. 

25:09 Keith Hayes: 

I would say that we still have an awareness issue where we're trying to get penetration and do people understand that you must be responsible for your own accessibility, we will help you but ultimately, everyone's job. That being said, I would say most faculty want to make things accessible. If I approached them with a problem, they say, oh, I didn't know that, how do I fix it? And which is very encouraging. And as I've been working with them, there's more faculty reaching out and saying, hey, I want to know how to do this. How do I fix it? So, I'd say that's been generally positive. There are a few faculty members who don't like the interference. But I would say we're going to find that everywhere. It's the perceived barriers to adoption, through perceived interference with modes of instruction, and a lack of awareness that we're not trying to tell people how to do their jobs. We're trying to show them how they can do it more inclusively, invite them to partner with innovation, and how to do this in a more streamlined manner. 

26:09 Speaker: 

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26:45 James Thurston: 

Raising awareness is everybody's responsibility, but also, I'm guessing, making sure that they know about some of the great resources like CITL and others that are available to them.  

26:56 Keith Hayes: 

Yes, exactly. 

26:57 James Thurston: 

And I know where I recall from our conversations, when we were doing the assessment and engagement, that there were real pockets of strength, I guess I would say, across the university, I want in particular being the College of Business, and it's all sort of born accessible approach, if you're able to maybe just talk a little bit about that, just because I know there's some real good practices there. And the extent to which that can be a department can be a sort of a beacon, an example for other parts of the university. 

27:26 Keith Hayes: 

Sure. They adopted the stance of board accessible, partially because they were having some issues with the accommodation process. There were faculty that did not want to accommodate, they felt like they need to accommodate was incongruent with the School of Business. So, this, of course, wasn't true. And so, they looked at it, worked on it, and came up with the slogan board accessible, and worked hard to put tools in place to make it easy. So, they are reviewing all courses for accessibility anytime when it's created. They have some fairly strict requirements for what you must do to make courses accessible. And they have some neat technologies going on. They're using a new technology called Class Transcribe, that was created by a professor in our computer science department, Warrants Ongrave as his name. It's a fantastic program that allows you to crowdsource captions. And so, they have set up because the college of business records every class. Those things must be captioned. So, they set up a way for students to rotate through and assign themselves to 10 minutes of a given portion of a video. And they have someone to review quality once it's done, but that way, it's very quick to get captioning is done. But they've expanded this now, so that it's beginning to work with our Kaltura Media Server. So, we can pull data out and all our videos are hosted within Kaltura. That allows for searchability and automatic transcripts as well as a route to create ePubs directly from the transcripted materials and it'll pull you can pull screenshots out of the video, or, or images that someone supplies, and you get an accessible ePub at the end of it. All of that allows their materials, which are supplied to just multiple formats in general to be accessible to everyone. That's not saying there aren't issues there are, there's always going to be, but they're doing fantastic work over there. 

29:33 James Thurston: 

Yeah, it definitely sounded like it. Just a couple of things there, then we'll move on to the next topic. It's interesting that in the work that we do with universities with these kinds of assessments and engagements, it's not unusual for the College of Business to be kind of at the forefront of leading the charge on accessibility inclusion from my experience, I think maybe for a variety of reasons. And we'll get to sort of the why of accessibility in the business case there at the university. But my sense is that at the University of Illinois, the College of Business had started to make that move from just legal compliance and risk avoidance to their actual real, there is a business case, there's a value proposition for being more accessible in terms of its faculty, staff and students, which I think we see with other colleges of business, which are often doing a lot of work online anyway, in well-resourced in many cases. So, it is not unusual to see the College of Business sort of at the forefront. The other thing that I just want to mention, you mentioned, professor was it, Lawrence Ongrave?  

Yes. One of the great things that the University of Illinois does, that's part of the assessment tool that we have is how is the university innovating around accessibility and inclusion in using technology and data to solve kind of long standing, accessibility and inclusion challenges on the campus and that crowdsourcing solution, I think, is a really great example of that in the real strength of the University of Illinois. So, congratulations.  

30:55 Keith Hayes: 

Thank you.  

30:56 James Thurston: 

Shifting gears, a little bit. So, you've been working and the university to help make accessibility improvements across the university's technology assets, but at the same time, also drive some organizational and cultural change in support of greater accessibility. And maybe that's even harder than making sure that you're remediating accessibility issues and technology deployments. Can you talk a little bit about how the maturity model process and the resulting roadmap may have played a role in helping to move things forward in terms of organizational culture change? 

31:28 Keith Hayes: 

Certainly. Well, one, the self-assessment processes that we did was very illuminating, it was fascinating that we consistently rated ourselves higher than what was found with the assessment tool. So basically, people felt like we were doing a much better job than we were partially because of the historic nature of dress, since accessibility, physical access started there with Tim Nugent, you know, all those years ago. And so, we thought we were doing great, we have everything sorted, and they got the results back and discovered that they know that we have more work to do. And that was interesting, I framed it in terms of, we've demonstrated a commitment to accessibility. But we are still beginning to understand the impact and full extent of the changes needed to be fully inclusive on campus, especially when it comes to our technology, I was able to repeat that discussion around with the IT accessibility liaison program, we have embedded liaisons in every academic unit now. And for the DEI Office, the Vice Chancellors for Diversity and Equity, and moving up to the chancellor with the provost, and pointed out that we have some structural issues that we need to address in a new way. Because historically we've done things on campus in the traditional way that don't work now. And it's not through lack of wanting, it's through just a lack of understanding. And so that was what we were going through then, the assessment, the roadmap that you gave us, the initial steps that were outlined were fantastically helpful. And they matched very closely what I had been saying that we needed to do. So, I was very happy about that. And I had that in front of me just a reference, and I've lost it now. 

33:15 James Thurston: 

It's great to hear that and I should explain maybe that when we do these assessments, we put together a team of experts from different perspectives from the disability community, from technologists that have worked on accessibility in universities and were really trying to bring to the university the best possible set of experiences to help them think about their journey and give them real time, advice and counsel as well. And it's not unusual for whether it's the city or university to in a self-assessment to assess themselves higher than maybe the end result would come from the expert team. And the other one thing that you mentioned that I just want to point out as well, that we saw as a real strength at the University of Illinois to build on is that Liaisons Program, I'm not sure how long it had been around. But the fact that you have placed people with accessibility, at least on their mind, part of the day, it was an accomplishment, I think we found something really useful to continue building growth and greater improvement on accessibility. 

34:15 Keith Hayes: 

And we of course, did create that come up with the idea of that program. That's something being used to great effect at multiple universities. I believe it was pioneered at Penn State, but I'm not certain. 

34:27 James Thurston: 

You mentioned that the roadmap and maturity model processes maybe reinforced some dialogues that you've been having around greater coordination, collaboration, and investment. I think it’s an issue at any university in really any large organization, this issue of coordination, collaboration, and investment and in being very cost driven with no real focus on except we're not enough focus on accessibility. As we were preparing you or giving you a bit of an update on how things were going at the University of Illinois. You mentioned what I think is a great example of progress since we have been working with you. Did you have be added to the IT governance council? Can you talk a little bit about that? 

35:05 Keith Hayes: 

Yeah, IT council was a government structure created under the Office of the CIO. And it is IT professionals and Dean's and others across campus and key decision-making roles. Our security officer is one member, our identity management officers, etc. And it's to consider the strategic decisions in IT procurement or IT deployment across campus rather. So, it's not directly tied to procurement, being there at the table means that I can ensure that accessibility is given voice. So that we're not just thinking in terms of business requirements, outside of accessibility, that accessibility is starting to be thought of as a business requirement, and the way it should be. And it's just been a little so far, I'm supposed to be giving a presentation more about my role, and the deeds on campus, sometime here in the next month, at our expense, we meet monthly, sometimes bimonthly. 

36:07 James Thurston: 

I think a fantastic success and step forward at the university and I'm not sure how it came to be that you were placed there, but the fact that accessibility is literally a seat at the table. And in that accessibility is now being looked at, from an IT strategy and priority perspective, in a way like security and other key issues seems like an enormous opportunity in advancement, I think. 

36:34 Keith Hayes: 

Yeah, the way that happened was building trust with technology services over several years of not being alarmist about accessibility, but explaining the risks that we were in. And that's difficult to do when all it takes is one lawsuit. So, we need to find a way to say we have a problem. I don't want to scare you, but we should fix it. And that takes a while to build that trust. But then pointing out after the policy and my shift unrolls that here are several strategic procurements and deployments that we did, where accessibility was not included. And now we're having some issues that might have gotten better if we'd had accessibility at the table. And they said, oh, right. And the CIO said, I'll add you. 

37:18 James Thurston: 
I'm sure, yeah, they from an IT perspective saw that, the sense of that immediately.  

37:20 Keith Hayes: 

Yes. 

37:20 James Thurston: 

Sort of in parallel due to the changes that have been happening around elevating accessibility and the IT infrastructure, the university. You've also talked a little bit about how maybe with the diversity and inclusion infrastructure, that leadership there is not really seeing accessibility as an integral part of diversity and inclusion as well. 

37:42 Keith Hayes: 

They're starting to, they're still having trouble coming to terms with it as an active part of diversity and equity. And I think that's because institutionally, we've thought of it in terms of accommodation. And so, in a reactive mode. There's been more explanation that this is a cultural shift that is needed. It's a central aspect of DEI, right along with dealing with racism, right along with dealing with Gender Equality and Sexual harassment. And it's just it makes sense to consider it in those terms and the only really functional way to approach it is with culture change, because as long as we're in a compliance only mode or interactive mode, we're not going to get there. So, after I was able to explain that at length to the Vice Chancellor for Diversity and Equity, that was a new consideration to him, it came along with the roadmap, document, the executive summary for that. And we were able to also explain that to the Vice Provost, Associate Provost as well, and explained that we need to be thinking about this in this way, it's made a difference there, they're not yet willing to commit resources beyond traditional channels. But I think we're going to get there. 

39:03 James Thurston: 

It's a journey. Congratulations on even in this relatively short amount of time since we last worked together, these shifts these changes, these organizational changes that should position you to make even more progress moving forward, which is great. Maybe shifting gears, a little bit. So, if you've related to, I think some of these important changes that have been happening there that you've been helping to drive and map and describing, how does the University of Illinois think about the business case for accessibility, the why of accessibility? 

39:38 Keith Hayes: 

I would say we're still coming to terms with just what a business case for accessibility would look like. We have begun to understand that the risk that comes with inaccessibility and the Office of Civil Rights Complaint and Finding could mean that our strategic well one loss of student’s revenue because students will choose to go elsewhere. But with OCR complaints and findings, we could end up having an audit of ours, I think he used the term ICT instructional computing technology. We use EIT, which is electronic information technology, so that our strategic plans for their technology deployments and our reliance on software that we're using, in a large capacity could be shaken with very, very tight deadlines. And that's going to be very expensive for us. That was something that the provost Office understood when it came to looking at Proctorial. They were looking at a renewal license renewal. And they came to understand that we could have a problem, though, with this other issue along with this, so we should probably go with something else. So that was good, but really, it comes down to still, they're concerned about accessibility getting in the way of day-to-day business. For example, when we make this new few minute, we have roughly 20,000 technology procurements every year. The majority of those, I'd say probably what do they tell me 70 to 80% are purchased under the unit discretionary budgets. There's something called a P card, and TEM. Anything below $15,000 is not monitored beyond that it's merely recorded as a line item. And the difficulty is that, how do we get in front of that? And make sure accessibility is a requirement there, at that scale?  

41:44 James Thurston: 

Yeah, we will definitely dig in deeper, a little bit more on procurement. Because the university is an enormous consumer of technology and purchase our technology on this issue of the business case, and why the value proposition for accessibility in really inclusion. You mentioned when we were getting ready for the discussion, the intricacies of supporting this shift from a departmental or unit level consideration of risk and resourcing to maybe a more coordinated system wide perspective on that. Can you talk a little bit about what that looks like at the university? 

42:26 Keith Hayes: 

Sure. So as with most universities, budgeting and resourcing has been considered per unit. And that has worked great in the past for business operations. However, now that we are moving to a more digital environment where software is purchased, and other technologies are purchased and used multi-unit, plus the need for captioning, etc. Having individual budgets isn't working as well, because there's not the resources there to pay for captioning. There’re not the resources there to fix a website that was outsourced. There's not understanding necessarily to make sure that a given technology that a unit purchases, that begins to take root across campus is accessible. And so, we are coming to the understanding that we're not there yet that we're going to need to put some central resourcing behind this. And some personnel behind it as well as budget. So that, for example, if there's a unit that has a website that has accessibility issues, we need someone who can be evaluated and remediate, or to float and go to that unit if they don't have someone. That sort of thing. One of the questions was with campus procurement in general, that issue I talked about with the uncoordinated purchases, one of the things we've allowed in the past was for what they call small purchases, which is anything under $50,000. A unit would be able to handle all the contracting themselves. And a vendor could come back and say we want to waive the accessibility requirements. That's just too difficult for us to meet. If you want our contract. We want to waive that. And so, the business office would get notified. And they would ask the purchasers, do you accept that risk? And they would say, well, yes, we accept that risk. We need the software. That has since changed. And as it were, how it's going to look like is in consideration, but when they procurement came to understand that a unit accepting a risk could affect the entire rest of the university and possibly the system as a whole because of the way OCR works. They realized very quickly that that's something that we can't allow. So, we're working out just what process of review and approval we'll have. Currently the contracts will be directed to me, after we've gone back to vendor and said, I'm sorry, no, we must meet these things to do business. And by the way, if you meet this for us, you're going to meet that for everyone across the US, because that's federal law. So, a little bit of education with vendors as well. That's been the primary thing so far as helping understand that need for coordinating risk across all of campus. And I'm also goigoing to phrase as if we can get past this stage, this remedial stage of what we're doing, then we can get into the business of innovating. We can get into the business of earning grants, and being awarded grants for the things we're doing, we can be showing our fantastic classroom approaches that are inclusive, where accommodation is needed far less, because we've done this ahead of time. 

45:53 James Thurston: 

This is really good. So, in this, this discussion, and I realize it's in process, this kind of making these changes to procurement that you and I guess some of your colleagues have recognized as being beneficial, both to the faculty, staff and students, but also to your ability to innovate and drive some other changes, making sure that accessibility is a part of procurement. Who can you describe, at some level of kind of who's a part of those conversations? Who are you working with to drive that change? 

46:21 Keith Hayes: 

Yeah, it's on multiple levels. On the Urbana campus, it is the Vice Chancellor for compliance or associate Chancellor's compliance, the ADA Coordinator, AIT coordinator, the head of campus, purchasing the purchasing office, the CIO. And I will be beginning those discussions with IT counsel. So that's on campus. And then we're also at the system level we're working on and a policy guide that will help coordinate across campus and one of the recommendations is that in that guide, is to ensure that there are strict procurement requirements and evaluation requirements, etc. And it's been somewhat modeled off what Urbanna has done, but there's been fantastic input from UIC and UIS as well. The biggest question right now is how we scale and how do we put resources in place. 

47:19 James Thurston: 

On procurement within the system, which is interesting. Do you see any procurement at any of the other campuses? Are there approaches like yours or any other sort of best in class, when it comes to procurement? 

47:32 Keith Hayes: 

I know that UIC has been putting in some great requirements. Aside from other work, I guess, absolutely. I work with the big things, academic alliance, the CIO, IT accessibility group. And we created in conjunction with the system purchasers across multiple institutions, some RFP requirements for accessibility, that were much stronger. Those are going into a place on the Urbana campus. I'm not sure if they're in place at UAC. So, my colleague is on call. She might chime in, and you will post to say yes or no. But in general, it's everyone is working to coordinate and make it much stronger. 

48:15 James Thurston: 

Regardless of organization with a university or a city or other governmental entity. This this issue of procurement and making sure that the technology we're buying into play is accessible is pretty critical. I think one of the in GQICD does a lot of work on this issue of procurement. One of the best organizations that I've seen on procurement, regardless of whether it's a national government agency, somewhere in the world or a city that has actually been a university in Georgia Tech. We've done some work with them. And they've worked hard to put in place systems that they are in, they're actually tracking with data, that they know that somewhere in the neighborhood of just north of just above 80% of their procurements, including micro procurements are being captured in a system that makes sure that they are including the appropriate accessibility requirements in their tenders and their RFPs that they're getting the Pat's from vendors. And they're also making sure which I think is great. Their procurement department for the university. It does train for different departments across campus, not just on procurement, but accessibility is always a part of that and accessibility as part of the tender so they're really pushing to get that 80% number up. 

49:30 Keith Hayes: 

That's great to hear James because that has been part of the discussion is procurement wants to be able to add accessibility training to their training. I am working with an IT counsel group to put in place databases for technology procurements. And we'll be working on finding ways to include entering the database procurements. So that's great to hear that it worked well. 

50:02 James Thurston: 

So, we're getting towards the end here, just maybe as any last thoughts, Keith on we all know that making these kinds of change system changes, cultural changes around accessibility improvements can take time and I know from my discussions with you at the time, and since then, that you really see the importance of being proactive in making strong changes now. That sort of inhale analogy, I guess. Can you talk a little bit about some of that, and maybe how the maturity model has helped with that, hopefully, but certainly how areas where, where you've sort of really taken the initiative to be proactive to make these changes, you had mentioned some examples around procurement and maybe some of the technology deployments. 

50:48 Keith Hayes: 

Sure. One of the things that Roadmap assisted with was helping us understand the need to make a stronger strategic case. Now, that was something that I, I knew, but that wasn't something that was known in general across campus. And it also helped the leadership know that they are doing good work here, and that they're in support, but there are some specific things that they could do. And so that's opened the door to having more conversation about being proactive in general. And one of the things that goes with culture change and goes with productivity is the need for education and awareness. No amount of technological solution will do this, no amount of policy will do this. There must be in what's the policy saying, go educate, which ours is. And so, it's been adopting a mode of reaching out to units when there is an issue and saying, hey, we have an issue here, where are you aware? And how can we work with you to put something in place so that this doesn't really happen again, for you, because it's difficult and expensive when we have to deal with it after the fact. And that's been good. As I mentioned before, that's worked well with procurement. It works well with technology services, and the CIO. 

52:13 James Thurston: 

I think that's actually a great spot to end our conversation, the steps that you've taken to be proactive, the way that you've helped to sort of force in push accessibility and disability inclusion, into the leadership structures of the university have been fantastic. Even making sure that in some of the recent technology purchases and deployments, accessibility is a larger part of that. So, I think that's great. And thank you for your willingness to be so open and clear about the journey that the University of Illinois has been on, that you've been helping to lead and drive. I appreciate it and applaud you for your great work.  

52:59 Keith Hayes: 

Thank you.  

52:59 James Thurston: 

Sure.  

You want to leave any last remarks. 

53:03 Keith Hayes: 

Yeah, actually, one thing I'd like to say is that it's very easy to become discouraged. Your small barriers can make large ripples in this arena. And it's easy to get into a feeling of embattlement, where you're fighting with and trying to convince people to be accessible. And what I would say that I found is that most people want to make things accessible once they understand that there's a need for it. And so, if you approach people in a mode of collaboration, and in a mode of empowerment, where you are saying to them, hey, we need to do this, here's what you need to know. And it's not that hard. You don't know what you don't know. And that's fine. But let's work with me here because we're still trying to find better ways to do it and I don't know what works for you. And so, it's a matter of being positive. Basically, there's a time and a place for you to know, and there are individuals who will not want to do this. But the validity of isn't questioned by most it's just a matter of how. 

54:16 James Thurston: 

Fantastic advice from in the trenches at a university, which we appreciate well, let's wrap here and as just as an announcement, the final webinar in this series, the sixth one will be next week. In that one will include a discussion with Megan Lawrence from Microsoft and Damien Tayana, a higher ed and accessibility expert. Those are two people that have been involved in working with GTA ICT and working with in assessing several universities. In that webinar the final installment of this series will actually be talking through the quick wins. These are the things that we put into this roadmap when we're working with a university that are things that steps a university can take relatively easy, relatively quickly, to make pretty immediate impact on greater accessibility and inclusion, and we'll spend some time talking through what are some of those quick wins that universities can be doing. Keith, thank you so much. It's always wonderful chatting with you and working with you. 

55:18 Keith Hayes: 

Well, thank you, James. I appreciate it and thanks, everyone for tuning in today. 

55:24 Speaker: 

Do you want to continue the discussion from this podcast? Members can access the strategic leader in accessibility community of practice in our member connections platform if you are not a member, please check our website for all IAAP membership benefits or email us at info[at]accessibilityassociation.org and we will be happy to talk about membership and help get you engaged.