Meeting minutes
<Jennie> Hi this is Jennie, joining from Eagan Minnesota
Hi, this is Julie, joining from Washington, DC
<jeff> Jeff Jaffe from Brookline, MA
<takio> Hi Takio Yamaoka from Japan, Good morning
My name is Jennie Delisi. Thank you for joining us. We're going to talk about how to work with COGA and how to help COGA work better with you. COGA stands for Cognitive and Learning Disabiities Accessibilitt Task Force.
Jennie: Any objections to recording?
Jennie: Speaker introductions.
John: My name is John Kirkwood. I have been on this working group for 5 years now, closer to 10. I have served as accessibility director for New York City Board of Education and other places.
Jennie: I am the accessibility analyst for Minnesota's Office of Accessibility. On this slide we also have information about Lisa Seeman who presented a session earlier this week. Special thanks to Julie Rawe for helping edit the deck and get it ready for you.
Jennie: I will put into the chat the handout for these slides.
Jennie: Our goal is to improve web accessibility for people with cognitive and learning disabilities.
Jennie: COGA covers a lot of different conditions—ADHD, dyslexia, dyscalculia, intellectual disabilities, age-related memory loss, neurodiversity, and mental health impairments.
Jennie: Mental health is a new area for us and we are still talking about how to refer to mental health issues vs impairment, etc
Jennie: Today we're going to provide an overview of the slides and leave room for discussion at the end. These slides will be available for you to review.
Jennie: We hope to answer the why, when and how to work with COGA.
Jennie: If you have questions during this session, please put your questions in IRC #cogainclusion. Or if it's easier for you, you can put your questions in the zoom chat
John: Why you should work with COGA. I have a personal experience with cognitive disability myself. I saw how the online world could be more effective for people like myself who might have visual processing issues or issues with absorbing too much information at once.
John: Working with COGA optimizes processes for everyone. We can help you incorporate cognitive design thinking into your processes. We can help you include user cases and user needs and help you get user feedback so you have something that is not complicated or overwhelming for neurodiverse community, including aging community.
<Bev> could you drop that reference URL here in irc?
John: When to start meetig with COGA? Start early. It's not just layering something over. It's about thinking about things early so it's functionally adaptable for someone with memory issues or processing speed issues.
John: Bring us in early on the user needs stage.
John: There are lot of interactions at W3C that have barriers to collaboration. This deck will talk about how to manage information streams. There's a difference between being accessible and being inclusive. It's about opening a door and removing barriers to entry and welcoming people in.
Bev, here's that's link: https://
<Bev> Thank you
Jeff: Is today about working with COGA or about COGA's work?
Jennie: There is a session tomorrow about COGA's Making Content Usable guidelines. Today is about how to work with us.
<Jennie> https://
John: The multiple forms of interactions—IRC, wikis, github, emails. How we work best is in single Google docs that you can comment right into in real time. There's also a link here to a COGA actions request page. Probably the most important thing is to CC the COGA co-facilitators.
Jennie: I just put the link in the chat.
John: The challenges with Github and finding elements in Github. Finding information in Github is challenging for some COGA members. We prefer email and Google docs, But if your team uses Github please work with COGA to tag a COGA member who can share information with the rest of the team in an easy-to-digest way.
John: Explain your acronyms.
John: This is about tracking resposibilities, dates and responsibilities.
John: I went into this already a bit, but digital wayfinding for this group is important.
Jennie: Email etiquette is actually very important for all of us. But for some of us with cognitive disabilities, there are some issues with email, especially long email threads, that is a barrier for some of us. Long threads that change topic. Using a clear, specific email subject line can help people. Yesterday Lisa shared that she needs the most important information. Subject line: "Can you meet on Wednesday?" That's a very clear [CUT]
Jennie: Sending calendar reminders can be very helpful. Some COGA members have identified themselves as slow readers. If an individual has missed an email, it's often helpful to resend with a short summary and with a specific subject line to make sure they see it.
Jennie: Some people need more time to review agendas. Some need to be reminded the day before.
Jennie: Including time boxes in agendas help people prepare and be ready and be flexible if more time is needed.
Jennie: Imagine moving between zoom chat and IRC and documents--the more things we load into a meeting where people have to go between them, that can make it harder for people to participate.
Jennie: Too many modes can be overwhelming. It's good to provide multiple ways of particupating but too many can contribute to cognitive fatigue.
Jennie: Calling people out by name can make some people uncomfortable. Some p
Jennie: Important to ask people "Is this style or format for meetings working?"
Jennie: Some people may not be able to participate at time because of mental health reasons.
Jennie: Providing a quick summary can help people participate. What is the context? What are the expectations for today?
Jennie: Providing feedback and achieving consensus. The consensus format can be confusing and hard to participate in sometimes. Allowing asynchronous responses can be helpful. The COGA team often allows additional two business days so people have more time and in a format that works for them.
Jennie: It can be really helpful for people to have a mentor, who to go to with questions, how to get accommodations, how to get feedback on how they are interacting.
Jennie: Many W3C meetings may have cameras on or cameras off. New people may be more comfortable asking questions in smaller meetings. When you onboard, you want to invite people to ask questions.
John: Reducing cognitive fatigue—one thing that's important is to structure things so people can self-pace. Long meetings without structure or breaks can be a barrier to participate. Keeping meeting as short and concise as possible is always tough. But realize that breaks can help people participate.
John: Help people know when a topic changes in the agenda or if a meeting is getting off topic. That makes meetings more effective for everyone.
Jennie: One of the things to think about is possible triggers. There can be emotional triggers or memory triggers. There can also be symptom triggers. One of the COGA members shared yesterday that white noise triggers symptoms. If you can alert individuals before a potential trigger, they can step away. if you time-box that discussion, the person can know what time to come back to the meeting.
Jennie: If the topic is difficult for them, that might be something somebody would ask for the ability to step away for that part of the discussion.
Jennie: Meeting etiquette. It's great that many TPAC meetings are sharing meeting etiquette.
Jennie: You want to review meeting etiquette when new groups form, when new members join, and as a group when people forget.
Jennie: Tomorrow's session will be about COGA's Content Usable. For now we want to give you a chance to ask questions about how to work with us.
Jennie: You can stop recording now.
<Jennie> Handouts for today's session: https://
Jeffrey: My sense is that the cognitive accessibility issue is a vastly misunderstood issue and doesn't get nearly sufficient attention, espeically with aging population, Baby Boomers. Do we have ideas on how to get more people involved? Today's presentation is about how to work with us. But that feels like Step # 2. How do we get more people involved?
John: As far as outreach by the task force, we do have a community group.
John: Your gut feeling is right. There is more outreach that needs to be done.
John: We've been getting a lot more interesting in the cognitive accessibility area.
<Jennie> COGA co-chairs: lisa.seeman@zoho.com, rainb@google.com
John: I was working with a financial organization that is very interested in this area.
John: so people can get and use their money and figure out how to do that online.
John: I think Lisa, the co-chair, would be able to say more to that.
John; especially with the creation of the community group, we want to get more people involved.
Jennie: Another thought to consider is one of the reasons we put this presentation together is it can be difficult to participate in the W3C process. You can submit an email as a response to a working draft. But Github is not something many people are comfortable with. We don't use Github so a majority of our members can participate. I think when there are more ways to participate, more people will participate. Try things out to help[CUT]
John: Experts who specialize in cognitive areas have trouble figuring out W3C's github ecosystem
Julie: Tomorrow
Julie: Tomorrow's session will explain the Content Usable guidelines and also how people can get involved in this work. We'll be inviting people in.
John: Designers are interested in cognitive.
Sam: Jennie, thank you for bringing this. I appreciate you showing us how to work with you. I wish I had a one-pager.
<Zakim> weiler, you wanted to ask for a one-page summary and to ask re: tech suggestions for non-GH doc editing/production
Jennie: The three of us will be sure to take that task assignment back to the co-chairs.
Sam: The other question I had. Several groups I'm in write things that aren't specs. What do you use that isn't Github to write things together?
Jennie: Google docs seem to be the preference.
John: There's a beauty in the way they work. You can go back through the history. See everyone's comments and history. You can get quick user feedback. You can tag people in comments and resolve comments. You're seeing it live in the proper format and see it in a way that is as clear as possible.
Jennie: Another piece that John and I have had conversations about—and we're not representing COGA officually with this—if we had a persistent chat, like Microsoft Teams that could be searchable by topic, especially for members who have executive functioning needs. The shift in tools itself has a cognitive load and a cognitive fatigue.
Jennie: It's about how we make that shift over time.
Sam: Shifting modes creates the risk of splitting channels.
Julie: The volume of Github notifications can be overwhelming, can lead to some notifications getting missed.
Jennie: And Github notifications often just refer to issues by number.
Sam: Is there a way to manage Github without introducing another tool.
John: Frankly, it evolves too.
John: Microsoft Teams is getting better. They all evolve.
Jennie: When a product, regardless of which product, how it is used for project management can be a cognitive overload of its own.
Jennie: If you are a lucky person to be in 30 projects, the number of notifications you have to sort through can be overwhelming. An overall data management plan would help. Until then, we need to be cognizant of how many interfaces we're going to use and how we're going to help so everybody can participate.
Suzanne: Thank you for this presentation. I can see how this would help people manage more projects and participation. I co-chair Accessibility for Children. We are wondering if scribing puts too much pressure on people.
John: Over the years I've heard people say I'm not good at scribing.
John: It's extremely difficult for someone with processing speed issues or memory issues or switching issues, you're going to knock them out of the conversation.
John: It's a barrier to participate for the person scribing, but it's a fantastic resource for people to be able to go back and look at how the conversation unfolded.
John: Having information in a multimodal way. If you're hearing it and seeing someone scribe it, it can help lock it into memory.
Jennie: I have noticed some groups have offered the ability to send the chairs a private email asking to opt out of scribing duty.
Jennie: We have some members volunteer to scribe, can sign up for days and times that work well for you.
Jennie: I saw in a tpac meeting some people using automated tools that can be corrected for errors.
John: Checking in with the scribe so the conversation can be paused so they can participate.
John: Thank you for coming. I want this conversation to evolve. The cognitive area can make everyone more effective in their meetings and communications.
<Bev> Thank you! Very useful and insightful.
John: can figure out which tools and protocols and work the best.
Jennie: We encourage everyone to join tomorrow's Content Usable session.