[Cato] Trusted tester update

[Jess Thompson]

Hi all,


I just had a conversation with Cyndi Rowland (of WebAIM) about working with us to revamp the DHS trusted tester training. I've been meaning to find out just what they could offer that would keep us under the $10,000 limit.


As you all may recall, they've tried pursuing this for the last few years, but unfortunately have not been able to secure funding for it.


Cyndi proposed trying a new approach - she's going to reach out to other systems that have expressed similar interests in this to see if we can pull together some sort of consortium of institutions that can pitch in to make this happen. WebAIM would essentially work to pull the training out of flash, align it with WCAG 2.0AA, then hand off the content to someone (like SBCTC) to build in the pedagogical structure.


While she says truly revamping the Dept of Homeland Security trusted tester training into what it should be is more like a half-million dollar project, she thought this might be possible if we get enough folks involved that could contribute a similar chunk and serve as part of a governance structure to help make some of the hard decisions that come with making what should be a half million dollar project happen on a dime. While we may be limited to contributing $10k, perhaps we (mainly, I) could also dedicate time into building out the instructional side with their content.


Anyways, Cyndi is going to touch base with me again next week to see if she's made any traction pulling in other partners. I'm going to reach out to WaTech and UW, maybe Western, and see if they might be interested. I think this could be really exciting. This could shift the vision from us developing something that we hope others would find credible and useful to developing a process in collaboration with others, thereby guaranteeing wider spread use. Our system could play a pretty instrumental role in this if we can offer up some resources in terms of time and effort and potentially put us in the national spotlight as a true leader in this area. I trust that SBCTC can do that given the leadership role we've developed for projects like Open and I-BEST.


Friday ramblings Part II coming to a close...


Jess



Jess Thompson
Program Administrator, Accessible Technology Initiatives
Washington State Board for Community & Technical Colleges
p: 360.704.4327 | c: 253.229.8591
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