September 2021 meeting of the advisory panel on racial disparities in the criminal and juvenile justice systems. And let's do introductions. I will go down the list, which I think is probably easier than going around the screen since pictures move with alarming rapidity. Tyler. Good evening, everyone. My name is Tyler Allen. I'm the adolescent services director at FSD, and I am the commissioner designated appointee for DCF. Great. Thank you. Susanna. Hello. Susanna Davis, Racial Equity Director for the state. Jen Furpo. Hi, everybody. I'm Jen Furpo. I am the designee for the Vermont Criminal Justice Council. Thanks. Judge Grierson. Good evening, everybody. Good to see you. Brian Grierson, Chief Superior Judge, and I'm going to jump in ahead of Etan just for a bit. I want to introduce Judge Zone, Thomas Zone, who is also on the call. I've invited Judge Zone here for a very simple reason. Some of you may be aware that I have announced that I will be retiring as of November 1st, and Judge Zone has been selected to take over my position. I looked at it as a person can only have so much fun in a particular job, and I think that I have had that experience, so it's time to share it with someone else. And so I wanted to introduce Judge Zone. Some of you may know Judge Zone from his work. He's the chair of the Sentencing Commission, one of the other functions that he serves. He's the chair of our Education Committee, and I think the transition from him to me, it'll soon be Brian who, and that's okay. Okay. So thanks, Etan. Sorry to jump in. No, not at all. Thank you, and welcome Judge Zone. Thank you. Thank you very much. Karen. Hi, everyone. I'm Karen Gannett, Executive Director of Crime Research Group, and I'm not a member of our DAP, but I'm providing consultation and technical assistance. And I just want to say, Judge Grierson, I'll miss you. You know that. And I just want to welcome Judge Zone. Barbara Kessler. Hello. Sorry I'm late. I was having problems with my audio and computer hooking on the story of the day. So are we just introducing ourselves? Yes. So I am the incoming co-director of FIP joining with Etan and replacing the irreplaceable Captain Scribner, as she heads off into a well-deserved retirement. So I'm looking forward to working with all of you. Thank you. Loretta. Hi, my name is Loretta Saki. I'm from the Council of State Government Justice Center. I serve as a policy analyst, and I am just here to observe. Thank you. And then we have Mark. Hey, it's Mark Hughes. Hi, Mark. That's Reverend Mark Hughes. And I am also the Executive Director of the Racial Justice Alliance. A hard stop on Brian Grierson's retirement. Just shout out to you, my friend, and thank you for all that you've done, not just for this group, but for their contribution that you've given to this state. So thanks a whole lot for that, Brian. And yeah, I am also the inaugural Vice Chair of this body, RDAAP. My resignation, as well as my wife's who is the Chair, is marked by about probably roughly about 42 months to this day we've been out. And we've been watching the progress of this RDAAP. And I am never more than about a half a step off of what you're doing and paying very close attention. And I'm here, as always, to contribute to everything that we're doing. And just to flag that the work of the Justice for All, as well as the Racial Justice Alliance, that legislation led to the creation of this group, as well as the Attorney Generals and the Human Rights Commission's Task Force Act 54 report on all systems of disparities, as well as the creation of the Executive Director of Racial Equity for the State. So I'm not going anywhere. I'm still here. Thank you, Captain Scribner. Good evening. I am Captain Julie Scribner. I am the current Co-Director of Fair and Impartial Policing and Community Affairs for the Vermont State Police with ATON and about to be replaced by Captain Barb Kessler. My role, our role is as proxy for Commissioner Sherling in this group. Thank you. Julio. Julio Thompson, Director of Civil Rights Unit, Attorney General's Office. I'm temporarily filling in for Dave Sher, who's left our office to join the Cannabis Control Board. Monica Weber. Good evening, everyone. I'm Monica Weber. I'm the Administrative Director, Services Director at the Department of Corrections, and I'm the Commissioner's Designee to this panel. And I also want to share with the judge that I'll miss you terribly. And I will certainly have lots of opportunities to say goodbye to you hopefully before you officially leave. And congratulations also to you, Captain Scribner. Thanks, Monica. Wichee. Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry. Wichee. Hi, everyone. My name is Wichee Artu. I pronounce he, him, has stayed in theirs. I was appointed by Susana Davis as a community member. I am a data engineer at a hospital. Thank you. Oh, and then Judge Davenport has come in. Hello. Hi. I'm Amy Davenport. I am retired Superior Court Judge. And I am on the Council, the Children's Family Council for Prevention Programs, which focuses on juvenile delinquency. Great. Thank you. All right. I think we have everyone. Great time. Yes. Rebecca here. Just wanting to put money there. Oh, Rebecca, you're just like disappeared. I'm terribly sorry. Oh, that's all right. But I also wanted Rebecca Turner. I forgot somebody else. Oh, there you go. So, Rebecca. Oh, this list. God. Go ahead. Rebecca Turner for the record, panel member, Representative for the Office of the Defender General. Congratulations, Captain Scribner and Judge Greerson on your retirements. And thank you for your service. Welcome, Judge Zona. Exciting to have you here at the panel. And great to see you, Mark. Sort of a fun group tonight to see everyone. Thanks, Rebecca. And Alona Tate. Did I say it right? Hi. Nope. It's Alana Tate. Alana. I'm the Compliance Monitor on the Adolescent Services Unit at DCF. And I also work with the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Great. Thank you for coming. Sorry I mispronounced your name. It looks like it's spelled with an O. It is. It is, and I just mispronounced it. I wanted to begin by apologizing for the completely remote format. I, without going into too much detail, my health is such that I have to be rather careful about public gatherings. I was taking that lightly at one point and was given a talking to by my PCP. This will not continue to happen. But it seemed important to have this meeting and to put up with this in spite of the fact that it's not ideal. So I did want to put that apology out to everyone. It is squarely on my shoulders. I'd like to turn to the minutes from the last meeting, which was, it sounds like ages ago, July 13th. I sent those to you. Thank you, Ian, for taking those. And I would be interested in hearing about any errata, emanation, so on and so forth. Anytime. This is Julie. This was from the, what meeting was it, July 13th? Is that what we sent? I sent it out yesterday as an attachment. I don't think I have it, so I am going to abstain, I think, on this, maybe. Would anyone like to make a motion? I'll move that we accept the minutes. Okay. I'll second. All right. Then I guess, any further discussion? No. Then all in favor, please say I or raise your hand or all the above. I. I. Okay. All those opposed? And all abstentions? Julie. Okay. Thank you. The minutes are approved as submitted. Announcements. What I have to announce, well, first of all, what I had started with, my apology. Secondly, Evan will not be able to be here this evening. And since his regrets, that's all that I have. Anybody else have, I mean, Judge Greerson dropped the bombshell. So anybody else's announcement, you know, it's just not going to measure. Witchie. Yeah. I just wanted to say I have to head out a little bit earlier today.  Okay. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Then not hearing anybody or seeing anybody having any other announcements. Let us move into the meat of the meeting, which was the idea was to give the panel as a whole a sense of where the working group, which has been meeting since early August, has been going, what it has been doing, and to get not, well, primarily feedback, but certainly questions, corrections and such from the wider membership of the panel so that it can continue doing the work that it's doing and make changes in the directions that it's going in and such as it continues to work towards this report due on the 15th of November. I do have to say this is sort of an interesting situation in which we find ourselves because most of the people here are indeed on the working group and we're in a meeting last night. So let's see how this goes. I add a loss as to what to do if the other panel members are not here because other, I mean, we could certainly continue the discussion we had last night, but I was hoping to give sort of a resume of where we've been and I was hoping in doing so to call on Susanna while Evan, who's not going to be here, Rebecca and Monica to sort of cover the important points of the working group's work to date. Why don't we just start with that? Susanna, would you like to start off? I mean, as I said, we're kind of giving a the broad picture here. Yes, I will start off broad and let others who are sharper put sharper edges on it. So the Act 65 working group has been meeting weekly on Mondays to begin to, well, to continue having the discussion about the so called, but maybe to be renamed Bureau of Racial Justice Statistics. And in particular, we've been looking to answer the five questions posed in the legislation, which hover around questions of where should it be cited, what should its scope be, how should it be staffed, etc. So using information that we've gotten from people like Witchie and others who are data experts, we've come to the conclusion that it's likely we'll need about four staff with roles pretty well carved out in order to create the data architecture needed for this office and that it would require a certain time frame, depending on how robust of a database we would like to be creating, etc. We have spent a lot of time thinking about where this office should be cited. The three main or the three most recent proposals that were put on the table were to put it, oh dear, Michelle equity to be a department and put this office within that, or to put it in the Vermont Criminal Justice Council, or I forget the third one. I'll let someone else cover that. And then we've also spent a lot of time looking at the mission and the purpose of the organization, which includes who are the external and internal partners it would liaise with and what really is the goal? Is it a public facing goal more than an internal data keeping goal, etc. Thank you. I hesitate to stand in for Evan and I hesitate to stand in for Evan because of the work that he did on that proposal, which was rather encyclopedic. Rebecca, is that something you feel that you can take on talking about what Evan's proposal was? Sure, I'm happy to share the proposal, which was really what we focused on at our subcommittee meeting last night. As Susanna said, we are having a meeting weekly from 6 to 8 p.m. And Susanna, when did we start this in August at the beginning of August? He started weekly meetings, maybe a week, but certainly I'm happy to do a sketch of that with others, hopefully to jump in to correct that. But maybe could I just step back to give context to why we were talking about that proposal last night? As part of our Act 65 charge from the legislature to answer five specific questions, as Susanna said, one of them being where this should be, this data entity. Let me pull up the legislation, but one of this recommended five points that the legislature wanted the panel to address and report back on was to actually provide draft legislation for what we were proposing, to not just put it in pros in a report, which we are preparing, but to actually put it in some kind of actionable draft legislation for movement for next session, which we understand is a high priority for many members of the legislature. And in that regard, Evan looked at actual legislation, and let me find that statute. Does anyone have that handy in terms of what that was? It was looking at right. He looked, he based it from the Department of Racial Equity legislation, which is now Title III, VSA 2202. Again, as Susanna said, we have been looking at places within the executive branch, guiding principles that this panel has settled upon from previous report projects last year, last December. We determined, A, was key that this data entity be independent. Right? So that there was an assurance from all who would look at and rely on this data that it was certainly something that could be trusted and actionable for policymakers to move on. So for us, that was critical to have independence. And we also agreed that there should be some stability to it, and that it be certainly well funded in that sense, and well staffed. Right? So we've been looking at where within the executive branch this should fall. As Susanna said, one of the places was sort of reimagining the current, the current, and Susanna, what's your office called now? It doesn't exist. Everyone just says the office of racial equity. There is no office, but we just keep saying that it's just the direct, the executive director of racial equity. I got it. I see. They turned your position and you're, it's amazing. You're an entire office. All right. So what Evan did was imagined it as a department itself, and importantly, as a department following within the agency of administration. So one of the things that we realized as he started presenting and using that legislation as a model to build our proposal, hey, for everyone here to know, we haven't settled on the appropriate place. But he looked at that and use that language. In so doing, there was discussion in there as to not just like the placement of the entity, again within the agency of administration, how that fit within our concepts of an ideas for independence of this entity. But as this legislation goes further into this section, there was more details as to who nominates the commissioner, was how Evan was framing the leadership of this new department of racial equity. So who would nominate this commissioner? Would it be a direct appointee from the governor or as currently fashioned here, the secretary of administration, then to be approved by the governor without further confirmation from the Senate? Was that going to be sufficiently independent? Then there was a question as to the oversight of this commissioner, meaning who had oversight? Was this commissioner an independent person who could run with decisions? There was reference in there as to the role of advisory bodies to this commissioner. And that brought up questions for us last night because we have previously conceived of this entity as not just being an executive director slash commissioner staffed with the two or three people to help, but to be guided by a body. And so as a threshold question, we have uncovered as a subcommittee is what is the role of this body to this commissioner? Is it merely an advisory body? Is it a governing body that it will direct and the commissioner listens to and is limited? This person would be limited in their ability to go outside of what the governing body would do. Another question was then, well, who would sit on this body, whether it's advisor or directive in purpose? And so the legislation that Evan shared with us, I believe this is where he copied and pasted, right? The current membership of the council. Thank you. Thank you. The Council of Criminal Justice Council, which of course was conceived in terms of membership for a different purpose, right? One focused on public safety, training, and law enforcement. And in fact, as we had previous discussions, we talked about and hadn't yet really delved into whether that was an appropriate makeup of a body. Certainly I shared my concerns that it was law enforcement, heavy and public safety, and not sufficiently community centered. And in fact, we'll share in the chat right now is this AISP toolkit, which was shared with the members early on in their beginning to center us. In terms of how there have been approaches to figuring out who should be on these bodies, advisory or not, when we're trying to center data integration with a sensitivity to ensuring that we're not perpetuating the racial inequities that this data entity is actually trying to uncover and understand. And so doing this AISP project out of UPenn had come out with this wonderful toolkit. And so we had started looking at it, and like it was a resource for us, we have it, but it came up last night in the context of Evan talking about this makeup of this body. We hadn't yet gone through the exercise as suggested by this AISP toolkit to help identify who should be on these bodies. That it was an interesting and fresh approach to how government committees are typically fashioned, right? A representative from the key government agencies. And instead what this was was a refocusing on making sure we had adequate voices from the community, from the groups being represented by and the individuals being represented in the data themselves. So people with lived experiences. Again, that was part of it. And then the issue of termination of the role of the commissioner, like who could terminate the commissioner. Again, Evan's legislation that he looked at discussed that. Does anyone else want to jump in and share what other significant points were brought up when he walked us through this? I think you hit the high points myself, but that's me. Anybody else? Actually, I remembered one. And did anyone want to say, Karen, what are you about to say? And he did say, and again, back to what the legislature tasked us to do in Act 65, five points for us to respond to. He recognized that this proposed draft legislation reworking did not address the enforcement mechanism. How the legislature tasked us to identify how we should enforce the data collection and aggregation system that we were conceiving. Recognizing that it's one thing to dream it, design it, set it up. But once it's a go, how can we actually keep this going? And so Evan recognized that wasn't there. The other piece that was missing, another requirement that the legislature wanted us to do in this November 15th report, was to establish how we would actually collect and aggregate this data. Karen has been, we've been calling the nuts and bolts plan aspect to it. The details of how we will actually get this done. Who will be securing these agreements, data sharing agreements, how all of those details. And Karen can speak more to that or others. Monica. Right. And that's it. Thank you, Rebecca. And that is why I put Monica on here. But I think Monica, you know, certainly, Karen, if you have things to add in, and I know witchy probably does as well, why don't you cover those? We were, this is more towards the fourth and fifth questions in Act 65 than it is towards one through three. Although, of course, there are relationships between them. Yeah, I would, I would definitely say it's on the, they're related and also sort of hinge on each other the way I think about it, four and five look a little bit different depending on where the body is, is housed and sort of, you know, if it's in the executive branch or if it's someplace else. So as a working group, I think that we've intentionally tried to separate those things out, understanding that they do influence each other and have been talking about the nuts and bolts, like witchy was instrumental in sort of helping us design as I think Rebecca, maybe Susanna, you said that, you know, they were thinking there would need to be at least four really data technical people who would be employed, people with some pretty high level skills. And that there's also going to be a fair amount of need to involve a lot of data entities within the state, particularly agency of digital services, just because that agency controls so much of the data within state government. So we've been having a lot of those conversations and also pulling from Mo came to the larger RDAP committee. Is that right, Karen, right? So, you know, we all heard from Mo from the search organization and thinking about how we could sort of use his work and the work of the national criminal justice reform project to help us sort of build and design what an infrastructure could look like that could support the entity, whatever the entity works out being. So there's a couple of graphs that we've sort of put together that, you know, display what could be. It's not the only way it could flow, but it sort of helps to outline that there's a lot of data that needs to flow back and forth before the bureau could start to analyze data, figuring out how to collect it and put it in one spot is very, very important and also very, very challenging to accomplish. So I think those were some important things that we recognize that there is a little bit of a difference in answering all those questions. But we were really, I feel also just to say that the committee, the working group, seems like it's very sort of close in terms of its common ground and understanding. And do you think that ASP toolkit was really helpful? And I think that we'll continue to rely on that as we move forward and answering some of these still really big, important questions. But yeah, Karen, would you, I mean, I think the two of you have had some very important aspects of this as well. I think you covered it really well. I think you both, I think you all three of you covered what the work we've been doing in the work group really well. I think the only thing I would want to add that I'm not sure the larger group has heard at this point is that the AISP toolkit also encourages groups that are doing this work to start small. And we've got that long data list in the report that was done by ARDAP that was submitted in December and really they're, they encourage groups to focus on what data can be accessed fairly easily and starting there and then building out from there. And I think we've had conversations that included that that aspect of things in it. Great job you guys. Great. So what we were hoping was, and I was not, unfortunately, I was not able to come to the working group meeting last night, but the takeaway was that we were hoping that the larger group would be able to provide some commentary, some action items about where we might go if this is not sounding like what you signed up for. If this is not the direction in which you wanted to go, I would direct you again. I think Mark just put in the chat, if I see correctly, the part, the relevance that part of the statute of Act 65 that asks those five things of us, it's those five. We don't have to do more than that. And I would say personally, I don't think we should do more than that. I think that's huge. I think that what it has asked is huge, particularly given that is asked that we provide draft legislation. I don't think there's any need to go anywhere beyond that. Someone, I don't remember who it was, was talking to me about funding. I, yeah, no, I would personally say let's not go there. The legislature itself never does. They write bills all the time that have no funding attached to them. I don't know why we shouldn't follow suit. I think we should talk about what the need is and anchor it in the need rather than in the funding. But I would be interested in hearing conversation about, I mean, I sent these documents out that pertain to everything that's been said here. I'd be interested in hearing back discussion, critique, so on and so forth. Judge Davenport. Well, you have a great team. Let me say that to start with. I know some of you personally and work with some of you over a long period of time and your working group team has clearly worked really hard. Meeting every week for two hours in the evening can be a challenge for some of us. And so I really appreciate the work you've done. A couple of comments. One, Karen's last point about starting small with what you know you already have. And then working on the, working from there on the things, on the data that you want, but is, doesn't really at this point exist. Or it exists in some form that is, doesn't really tell the story that you want to tell. Some agencies, for example, keep data point in time. I'm looking virtually at Monica. So that when somebody says, okay, so how many, you know, how many people were put on probation on Department of Corrections probation last year, the response is, well, we can tell you how many were on on July 17th, but we can't tell you the aggregate of how many were on for a year. So that's, you know, you have to deal with what you have, getting to the point of some, for some, I think for some pieces of data, getting to the point of where you want to get to may require agencies like the Department of Corrections and DCF to get whole new case management data systems, because that's not the way they, their current systems keep data. So I think that was a really good point that was made. We do have stuff that we can start with and then moving from there. I did want to comment just briefly on the, and I understand what Evan was trying to do, taking existing legislation and a kind of morphing it a little bit to be, to get it to where, to a direction that we wanted to go. And I realized that there's lots more work that's going to be done on that. But I would point out, and this is with my juvenile justice hat on, the criminal justice council never looked at juvenile delinquency data or what the policies were or anything like that. And if you look at that list of people, first of all, it's an enormous group. And I would question how workable it is to have a group that's that enormous. But secondly, what jumped out at me as I read through it, and it's not surprising because it's the old criminal justice council, which really hasn't been functional for a while. There's nobody on there. There's, I didn't even see somebody from DCF, let alone, you know, a juvenile public defender or a juvenile prosecutor or anything like that. And, and those are folks who do, who work in a world that's different from the adult world. And it's really important that we have, that we maintain a focus on the delinquency juvenile justice data, which were required, by the way, by the feds to keep as, as I think has been pointed out on a number of occasions. And don't, don't, don't lose that. But anyway, just a small point, because I know you're, you're, you're not looking at that draft legislation as the, you're looking at it as a springboard, not as a final product. Thanks. Thanks. Thank you. Rebecca and then Michie. Thanks Judge Davenport for bringing and highlighting the need to focus on our, our second part of our title, right, which is that, which is the juvenile justice system. And it gives me an opportunity to clarify that you're right, we've so far talked about this, this draft legislation that Evan presented. It is an example, sort of a drop in of where we are as a subcommittee for the moment. And I would expect that there'll be a lot of different versions and ideas as we come up with this. And so appreciate that focus. But back to your point, we have specifically been concerned that there is an inherent tendency to give that side of the system short shrift, right? Children are different. We definitely cannot be tempted to just treat them as the same because it's close enough to the criminal, right? And so what we conceived as, as, as addressing that for purposes of this data entity design, then going back to how we were thinking bigger picture of the structure of the entity itself, having sort of this commissioner level with the staff beneath her or him being advised or governed by a separate body. We're talking about who's on the makeup, right? We conceived that there would actually be multiple bodies, each body's dedicated to the system itself. So one would be just for the criminal system, court system, the other would be for the juvenile system, drawing similar but separate and different expertise and perhaps and membership as you point out, right? And so when we think about the membership, in fact, what I didn't get to in bringing this up and we are grappling with, as a subcommittee, we'll bring it back to the panel next month, I anticipate, is the name of it. We've been focused on where it should be. But one of the experiences that Aetan and I and others who appear before the legislature last year when this was initially being discussed was this immediate like, wait, we don't just need data from on racial equity issues or ethnicity. What about other areas? What about other systems? Education, health, right?  So one of the things that we've been very sensitive to is the scalability. Again, a question to our panel next month, I anticipate is, are we creating an entity that is purely focused on racial equity data, data, albeit juvenile justice criminal court systems? Or are we doing it broader and it's sort of a data statistics? And in fact, that's where there was a proposal submitted where it's named office of the social justice statistics. Again, a recognition and not towards the fact that we're looking at this as a bigger project than just merely collecting on race and ethnicity, because that doesn't give the complete picture of disparities of individuals in these systems. Richie? First, I just want to echo of what an amazing team I think. Overall, I think so many folks are bringing in so many different perspectives from so many different angles. And it's very interesting to see all of this come together into something that actually I think is making sense. So a couple of things that I want to name that I don't feel necessarily got the attention that they deserved. One being that we've talked a lot and I think it's going to be an ongoing conversation about who sets the path on what it is that we're reporting. We've talked a lot about this committee that's going to help decide what's happening with that. But to be honest, one of the big hurdles that this office is going to have to overcome is everyone's going to want all the data all the time. And when something gets developed, right, it'll take a few years to get developed. And in the meantime, you'll have but you also want this and you also want that and we also need to see this and all of a sudden this thing is happening now. We should be able to have that. So really being able to have that stakeholder management and prevent that scope creep is going to be essential in order to see the success of this of the short term scope. We're going to we're hoping this is going to set and also the larger vision of bringing in all of these social equity lens that we foresee in that sort of making sure that we get all the different perspectives and getting the story that isn't told. One of the things that we have that we mentioned but is not really like being addressed in answering these questions, but I do think that we need to state it in our report somehow is the fact that we don't have a way to collect qualitative data. And again, I'm not going to state enough how crucial it's going to be that if we want policy change the this categorical data that's going to come from the data warehouse in those reports are only going to tell us the what is happening is not going to tell us how and what we need to do to change it or mostly won't. So just making sure that we keep that in the front of our brains as we develop this system as we develop this office that that is an important part of that because that is data and that is important. Thank you. I just want to note that Robin Joy of Crime Research Group made that same point early on with the working group that we would need that qualitative data as which he points out particularly early on as things are getting formed. Judge Davenport, your hand is up again. Am I correct? Sorry, no, it should have been lowered. Oh, I'm sorry, my mistake. Mark. Well, this is fun. There's a lot of good stuff. It's good to be back. And I was thinking about the 15 or 16 years I've worked as a certified information systems auditor as well as a security professional, you know, as which he was talking, I was, you know, thinking about just roles based access to data and understanding that there's going to be multiple layers of access and control on it, which he and, you know, I think the business unit owner and their role in it is, as you said, very critical because that's what establishes. That's who defines the roles, who decides who needs access to what based upon their responsibilities in their roles as their employees. And they also take on the roles of data owners. And yeah, I think that this is all headed in the right direction. And I just wanted to just go back to and lift up Judge Davenport was saying without repeating it and just bolster that. And at the same time, as I'm getting off the call because I got to get on the Bible study, I just wanted to mention that, you know, Scope Creek, the whole conversation about Scope Creek is important. I know like three and a half years ago, four years ago, what we were talking about was, hey, guys, go back to your business units, find some high impact, high discretion decision points. Let's begin to collect data on those. And let's look at them as an example. I'm sure you remember those conversations, the time you were here. I'm sure you remember those conversations. And really what that was focusing on, the whole purpose of that drill was, let's get after the data that's important.  That's true. But at the same time, if it's not high impact data, if it's not those data that is really critical in terms of understanding racially disaggregated outcomes, because at the end of the day, you are the racial disparities in the criminal and juvenile justice system advisory panel. And she is the racial equity director. This is the report from the attorney generals and the human... Well, I think what I did is I just dropped a data card over for you. That's over on our website. What we did is we also collected high impact, high discretion decision points across multiple systems, which is probably a good strategy. This is what I tried to drop to you a minute ago. That's the report from the attorney general and the human rights commission that said that there are racial disparities across all systems of state government. Is it important that we have an opportunity to look at the rest of disparities? Of course it is. But, well, we were actually sanctioned for and set up to do within this, within the scope of the work that you're doing because of something specific happening in this state. Systemic racism was to look at things from a race perspective. So, yeah, I do believe that it would be scope creep, especially being that we haven't even figured out the justice system as it pertains to race. We haven't even figured that out. And you're talking about expanding on to what, gender and LGBTQIA and blah, blah, blah, great stuff. But I think it's a good goal. But I think in my opinion, where you want to start is race. Of course, you want to think when we build a data system, it always has to be expansive. We have to build it to be able to comport to everything else. But where we start is our scope. And the same thing with when we start getting after, even if we got the whole justice system, we've been talking about state's attorneys and the defender general's office and corrections and juvenile. We've been talking about this for four or five years, four or five years now. Come on. So, at some point or another, once you do get that nailed down, we're going to have to start talking about housing and education and employment and health services access and economic development and transportation and all these other terms to get to the heart of the racial disparities that exist, those high impact, high discretion decision points, where data already exists in these systems and where it doesn't, it's probably because the form in which folks are inputting the data does not have a requirement for race and or the database is not housing it, or maybe those reports are just not being pulled. It's going to be rarer.  But the bottom line is, I just wanted to share that. Appreciate the time that you guys gave me to, to gather. I understand I only got like five minutes. I'm going to stop for a minute and just hang out before I check out to hear what he has to say before I drop off. Thank you. Okay. Witchy. Yeah, I really appreciate your notes on scope creep. And thanks for sharing those data cards, Mark. I actually did look at that before I joined this RDAB. And I was actually really excited to see that. It was part of the reason I was so excited to join RDAB for this kind of stuff. I do just got to say, well, I do agree it's a certain kind of scope creep. I want us to recognize that it's not just about race, like it's definitely about race, like we are the racial disparities.  It's not just, oh, a lot of folks of color lost their jobs during the pandemic, actually black women were the ones who lost the most, right? So we're seeing that disparity actually gets even worse for those who have like multiple identities within the disparities. So we do, I do agree that we have to be careful about how much we take on, but I do think that we need to proactively create the space because you know what we don't collect in the state? LGBTQ plus data when it comes to who got COVID. And I can tell you right now is definitely disproportionate, but we don't have the data to prove that because we never had made the space to. And we never had the data for the race until we made the space to. So I think it's just, it's like a yes and it's, you know, preventing scope creep, but also making sure that we make space for all marginalized folks because it's, until we do, we're going to keep just marginalizing through things that we're just not seeing. Mr. Chair, just quick follow up before I hop off on that. And I want to respect what Richie just said and honor his perspective and his opinion on that and just really lift that up. And that is important, very important to me. In the work that we've been doing since we started across the state, I've often been approached about intersection. The challenge is, is that very seldom do we have the opportunity to build the capacity and bring into relationship and collaboration and critical mass of Black people in order to bring something to an intersection conversation. What I mean by that is that, you know, in this charge of, you know, focusing on race, first of all, it's a charge. Okay. There is a specific reason in 2017 why this group was created. Okay. And there's a specific reason why Sutana Davis's position was named what it is. It wasn't by accident.  Women's reproductive rights and so forth. So that's really important to focus on. Reason why is that if you're going to address systemic racism, the United Nations says that the shadow slavery, the middle passage was a crime against humanity. Okay. In other words, when we start talking about reparations and having those conversations, it's not rising tide lifts all ships. It's that you have to lift up from the bottom up. You cannot have a real conversation about systemic racism unless you talk about the Civil War. So this whole business about critical race theory and all that other business, you know, it hurts gay people more, those folks who are Black. Get it. But first, you got to have the first conversation. So I'll leave it there. I submit that respectfully. It's not really scope creep as much as it is. It's just very difficult conversations in how we keep ourselves focused on addressing systemic racism as a state. Right. Okay. Thank you very much for your time again. And truly, respectfully, Witchie. I want to just put in, I'm not sure, with all due respect to Mark's points, which are excellent, that designing the system in such a way that it's scalable is necessarily not paying attention to race. I think it's saying that the system is flexible enough that it can be built in different directions. One of the graphs that Rebecca had prepared, and I had embroidered upon, talked about these governing bodies that we've been discussing as I drew in a governing body for something else that's an unadapt concern later on, and so on and so forth. I think that those don't exist right now. But I think what we were talking about was designing a system that can be built out as need be. Starting with race, absolutely. That's what our charge is. Mark's quite correct about that. I doubt we've ever lost track of that. But I think that building in scalability is not the same thing as forgetting about chattel slavery. Anyone else? Karen, I have a question for you. Is it possible, and this feels embarrassing because you've probably already done it, I have this fantasy of a copy of the report from December with you and Robin circling what's right there right now in the section that concerns the prioritized list. In other words, it may be a prioritized list of high impacts, high discretion points, and I'm fantasizing about this with red circles around it so that I don't miss it.  We did do that in the report. We did put in the second column what was available and what wasn't, but I think one of the things we could do is pull apart so that we put the data points and move everything out of that chart and put the data points in what's available now, what could be available with a little work, and what's not available now or by law can't be disclosed. I think we can take what we have in that in that table and move things around so if more data are available, does that make sense? Yes, you cut out for a second there, but I think the overall arc of it made a lot of sense. Okay. That would be wonderful. I personally would love to see that. Okay. Yeah, we can do that. Because my recommendation would be that we take that and start there. The other question that then is going to be significant here, and I'm going to put this out there, this is arguing against it, is that we then are making decisions that the governing body would not have. We're making decisions for them on some level, and so we as a working group and as a panel are going to have to be comfortable with that following this approach. I guess my response to that would be, and nobody mentioned Rebecca's fabulous start on the report, getting things put together, and I think my response to that would be in that report and in the work we've already done, one of the responsibilities we gave to the governing body was to review those reports and pay attention to the recommendations in those reports, and so I think it fits with the work that we've already done and kind of the responsibilities that are being carried over into this new report. Then Robin, if you would circle things, I'd love that. We'll get that done. Thank you. Monica. Thanks. This may be getting into the territory of going a little bit too far beyond the scope of what the legislature asked, but it was an idea that came up while you were having this conversation because I do think it's important, and that list, and you mentioned this, Karen, to talk about what's identifiable data, what's protected data, and to start to think about when we can, if it's too hard to figure it out, really list for the people who are going to read the report and maybe help out the new body so that they understand what the data landscape looks like right now. This is where we're starting. These data are extremely difficult to get. They're protected by this, that, and the other thing. That's allowed to work, as I say it out loud, and we may not be able to get through everything, but I'm just posing it as something that may be a useful idea to include. Another significant issue here that concerns me, and I keep putting it in the back of my mind every time it comes up in my head, is the availability of data that exists, that these, I don't like the term data agreements and such. I hear Robin and Karen mention that, and then I want to go watch TV, because it just, it sounds like an absolute mess, and it sounds like so much of a mess that I am not entirely certain that this body has it in it to tease that out. I may be wrong. I'm perfectly open to being wrong. It's more fun to be wrong than some ways. You learn a lot more, but I, my sense is that that is a real thicket that we're going to have to confront, or somebody involved in the creation of this entity is going to have to confront. I am not entirely certain that the people on this call are those people. I'll just leave it there. Rebecca. Anton, thanks for raising that. There's always this constant tension, push, pull of how much we need to get into the details, how much the details will consume us and will be the black hole. I appreciate your point particularly. We've been talking about data sharing or problems with getting the data, assuming it's available. It came up last night in terms of whether there's not, assuming even not ill intent to cooperate, but just staffing issues, things like that. From the individual agencies or departments who are asked to provide this data, then there's FOIA. There's FOIA requirements. There are various laws that come into play. I agree.  I think there is a way for us to address it so that we both acknowledge it. I'm recalling our December 2020 report when Judge Greerson was addressing these issues, caveated with when we identified the various discretionary disinterpoints that we wanted, caveated generally, broadly, to the extent that you have the ability to. I think we can acknowledge certain things, whether it's these agreements that exist, or it's a practice, or it's the norm, as well as public access laws, things like that. There's one more point I wanted to make. Again, Karen, it sounds like you're getting a pile of asks. Maybe this didn't belong to you, but it was something that witchy brought forward that I appreciated, which was the best methods of data collection aggregation. He was addressing not just the numbers, the quantitative look, but the qualitative. As he talked about, it was something that we have realized is an important focus, not just to get full context of numbers, to sort of as a way to counter built-in disparities already embedded in the way we collect data in the first place that tells incomplete stories, but to address our problems. We've heard people from CRG, Robert, and Karen talk about the problems when the data set is so small, and how important it is that that isn't the stopping place for us. Yes, the data may be so small, the sample size. What are we going to do about it? What can we do to make sure that we can continue to capture those numbers so that these groups are not rendered invisible, right? Ununderstandable. I feel like qualitative methods might be a way, again, I'm not the expert in this field, but I would encourage those who are here or who we're consulting with to not just throw out these for general broad phrasing where we could insert what we think we understand qualitative methods to be, but again, that tension of finding that nice balancing point of too much detail, appropriate detail, to give some guidance and substance to that meeting. Thanks, Karen. So I'm getting my laundry list together here, and Eitan, I just want to say I'm sorry we drive you to watch TV. No, no, no, no, it's good TV, but it's not really a question, it's just I get scared that we don't have everything we need to do what Act 65 asks. That's all. So this is what I think we can do, and I've got a couple thoughts here. So we'll take the list and we'll go through it and talk about within the list you all have already identified what we see to be available, not easily available and protected. We'll look through that and we'll do that. And I may want to consult with a couple of you to talk about what's the best way to frame that beyond just circling it in red. We may actually want those lists done differently. Rebecca, you and I have talked about the value separately to the meetings, the value of qualitative data. And I have given, at one point I said it's really important that this actually go into the report because it has to be highlighted for the legislature that funding qualitative studies is a really important thing because the data sets are so small. And you're going to get this as Robin has said before, you're going to get a qualitative study quicker than you're going to get some of this data that you're looking for for this new office or new department, whatever we're going to call it, this new entity data entity. And so I think it's really important that go in the report. And I have shared that with Robin, she couldn't be on the call tonight, but I have shared that with Robin. And as soon as we're done a couple of reports we're working on right now that are due soon, she and Megan, who is our qualitative researcher, will pull together a paragraph for the report on qualitative studies and how they're done and the importance of doing qualitative studies in this realm. And what was the other thing? Best methods for data? Oh, and I think the other thing that could be really important, and I know Robin's done some work on this already, but it may have been premature to share it when we did, is what data do we access? So where do we get the data for our studies and what data do we have easy access to? So beyond your list, what other things are available? So for example, what we know about law enforcement data is that DPS is rolling out the new Valkor system and that they're going to, it may take some time, but they're working on that.  Karen, you might want to try turning off your video and talking because you don't have enough bandwidth for both. Oh, dear. Oh, there. Okay, you're back, Karen.  Oh, can you hear me? Now we can hear you. Can you hear me? Okay. So I'll just do those things, and I'll actually write these three things up and send them out to you all so you know kind of what our tasks are. And I'll stop talking now because obviously my connection's not good right at this moment. Figures. It would be when I'm talking. Okay. Thank you, Karen. Other comments, concerns, topics. Lulio, I don't mean to single you out, but you're very quiet and you're very smart. I don't have anything to add. I've just been, I think everyone's provided a good summary of the issues. I'm still getting acquainted with a lot of the details of the work that's been done. So I was just doing a little list. Okay, just wanted to make sure. I would recommend for everyone who's a working group participant that we look again at the work. What is it, Rebecca? Worksheet, work, works. Are you saying the AISP toolkit? Yes, I'm sorry. It's getting late and my brain is turning into a very unpleasant thing. I would recommend that we all look at that, particularly focusing on how to constitute the governing body so that we do not replicate systemic racism that are already in place and start our discussion on Monday with a discussion of what that governing body might look like. I suspect we're going to have a harder time coming up with the composition of that governing body than we are with the body that Karen and Robin proposed. That's about nuts and bolts. I think that's going to be easier because that's going to require people that are going to get hired because they have a particular kind of resume. That's my guess at least. So I would like to concentrate a bit on what's going to be more complicated, which is that governing body that may only be advisory. I think we should really focus our efforts at that juncture. And that's what I'm proposing. Tyler, you're looking very thoughtful. I was just thinking about when you were speaking about the second body that's the nuts and bolts. Were you talking about the office staff that we'd be proposing to hire? No, it's Karen. Do you want to describe it? You know exactly what you mean, and I'll use bad words. So yeah, if I can talk and stay on here at the same time, I'll see what I can do. So part of this is looking at we work a lot with the agency of digital services on our contracts. So we have this attachment D that tells you all the data security and privacy and all those requirements that get put in place when you get data from the state. And so part of this nuts and bolts work is to get the policy execs and the tech people together to talk about sharing data and making sure that the data sharing agreements are getting written up and have all the requirements that ADS need to have in them because they're used for all the state contracts in the executive branch. So it's to get the nuts and bolts of that work done so that this group can then actually access the data. And the data itself remained to be seen, but getting that process moving and in place and having those people talking with each other I think is a really important piece. And that's a different, so Monica and I have been calling it the infrastructure governing body. So it really is the tech people getting in there and working on the nuts and bolts issues of sharing data. Monica. Oh, sorry.  Monica. I don't want to cut anyone off either. But you know, and we've talked a lot about this concept of data governance and even Mark mentioned some of these things when he talked about people who own the data and stewards of data. So there's this whole level of data governance with lots and lots of principles around it that include some of the things that Karen talked about security, quality, redundancy of data, like how you manage pulling lots of data sets together. I do think though that sort of the roles piece, the people that we hire is connected to that, although it's kind of in both realms in terms of like the scope and how the data entity will operate, but also understanding that those people have to really understand that body of work as well in order for it to work well. Right. There's a reciprocity there. Anyone else? I did have one other thought and that is a little bit to the point Monica just made about those people that we hire. In the draft there we've kind of described what the office staff required are and I'm wondering if there wouldn't be an evolution of how that looks. This grouping of people and I recognize this is not my expertise, but it looks like it's more paired to implementation of a new thing and that maybe something three years down the line or farther down the line once we've had a developed system, we might need more energy in the area of project management or something more technical related to data governance or something like that than for example an engineer or an architect rather than an engineer who would be about designing the program. So just one thought. Fascinating point. Yeah I think I just have to sit with that for a few minutes. What would that look like? Thank you Tyler. Well I think part of that question too is where the entity is housed right? If it's in the executive branch and ADS has some role in that they have the architects and engineers and would have to be working with those people and maybe that frees up the data entity to have more project management and analysts and people who can write reports and do visualizations. So many ways of thinking about it really. Or if an RFP went out or something along those lines and Mo came in and designed the program for us that would hire staff who are in more in the analysis world, especially if we're considering qualitative analysis there's a lot of legwork involved in effective qualitative analysis. Right. Monica you make a really good point about ADS that makes it very tempting to say oh let's just house this in ADS. I will restate my objection to that and not an objection but just like I don't think it's the right place just because ADS is really like they are the nuts and bolts and they're not the enough. They're needed. They're 100% needed in order for this to work well but they're not the group that's supposed to be analyzing and producing reports along this line as an individual agency right? They support other organizations doing that. Okay further commentary. Okay I would like then to focus upon where we're going to go for Monday with everyone who is a working group participant. I've already put out there that I would like people to look over the oh god I get it wrong again. Here I go. I just got a block Rebecca. Oh you can have a tool kit. We know what you're talking about. I put the link in the chat and I'll resend it to everybody. Well we got it. I mean it's just my brain is I don't know and to look at that and really talk about what that governing body might look like that's my contribution to what I would like to see happen for Monday. I'd like to start firming that up. I mean other things will certainly grow out of that without question but that's what I would like. Karen is going to work on circles. Circles. Circles about data. So those are two things. Anyone else? Are people interested in knowing what sort of like the principles of data governance are? I could try and find some yes I see yeah some brief stories of that. Oh yes of course you are. I'll try and find something that's well I get scared and I don't want to be scared a bit and I'm just scared. Okay. I'll try and bring something that's easy to digest. Okay that is a big lot of work right there. Does everyone feel comfortable with that? If someone doesn't this is like that moment in a wedding speak now forever hold one's peace well it's holding that peace then so that's where I'd like to go on Monday or at least where I'd like to start rather on Monday. I don't want to hold everybody here to eight just because it's eight o'clock. If the discussion has naturally wound itself out I'd rather just leave it there rather than repeat things that have already been said but if someone feels like something has been missing this is the time. Okay then then I would entertain a motion to adjourn and make a motion to adjourn. Is that seconded? Second. All in favor I all opposed all abstentions we are adjourning and in doing so I would like to bid welcome to Captain Fessler and to Judge Zolne and to all of our guests who came today and we hope that we'll see you again. I'll be in touch certainly as the week progresses with more information about Monday so thank you all for your time and work and talk to you soon. Have a good evening. Thanks everybody. Bye bye. Bye.


My name is Patrick Bouchard. I am an accessibility analyst with NELS and I'm going to be talking about the process of discovering accessible ebooks in a commercial setting so from online bookstores. So most books nowadays are born digital. They're created using writing software on a computer or other similar device and are simultaneously released in digital and paper formats. Which is good for equal access because books that are born digital are more likely to be born accessible which allows everyone to enjoy them as soon as they're published. It's not like it was 20 years ago when I had to wait two months for the second half of a Harry Potter book to arrive. I mean that's certainly ratcheted up the suspense, but it's not exactly an equal experience. So things have definitely come a long way since then. But there are still several pitfalls to be aware of when searching for accessible ebooks. Firstly, older books which were not born digital but later converted into a digital format may have been converted in a way that doesn't make their text readable by a screen reader. And while the text of born digital books is usually readable by screen readers, other elements might not be things like images, charts, footnotes, these things all need to be tagged properly for a screen reader to be able to read them correctly. Not all publishers do this and not all reading apps support these tags even if the publishers do include them. And this is where accessibility metadata is so important because it allows a publisher to specify which accessibility features their books support and it allows a bookstore to pass this information along and clarify which of these features their app supports. This way, a blind reader such as myself can know ahead of time if a book is going to meet my needs and if buying it on a certain platform will allow me to fully read the book. So I'm going to demonstrate the process of searching for ebooks on some of the largest, most well-known online bookstores out there, Kindle, Kobo and Apple Books. And we're going to explore what accessibility information they share about the books that they sell and how I might go about determining if a book is going to meet my needs. So we already have the Kindle app on my screen here. So we're going to start with that and we're going to search for a book. Kent's search field is editing. We're in the search field already. So I'm going to search for a 10. Dragging title, Mason. Resolve submit. We're going to find the book I'm looking for. Dragging Mason County, Curtis Campbell, book not downloaded button. And I'm going to open the book details screen. Alert book details, book detail, Kindle, discover new books. Dragging Mason County by Curtis and speaking rate headings to explore the screen. We're going to skip ahead to the about the Kindle edition section. Dragging Mason County, heading buying options, heading download sample, book overview, heading level one. Spoiler alert, accessibility information will not usually be in the overview section. That's more of the synopsis about the Kindle edition heading level two. Here we go. So let's explore this section. Bullet link length to 190 pages link bullet link screen reader supported link. OK, so it's a screen reader supported. That's certainly good news. That makes me believe that I shouldn't be able to read this book. It's also a link so I can double tap it to get some more information. Screen back heading level four link about the Kindle edition. Lang to the estimated length is calculated using the number of page turns on a Kindle screen reader supported heading level three. The text of this ebook can be read by many popular screen readers. Voice view on fire tablets and Kindle readers voiceover on iOS talk back on Android and NVIDIA on Windows descriptive text for images known as ALT text can be read using the Kindle for PC app if the publisher has included it. If this ebook contains other types of non text content, for example, some charts and math equations that content will not currently be read by screen readers. See the Kindle accessibility page to learn more. So there's some good information here. It specifically lists voiceover on iOS as a screen reader that's supported, which is good because that's what I'm using. It also tells me that alt text for images or image descriptions will be read. Using the Kindle for PC app if the publisher included them. But there are two problems with that. First, this is not a PC as I've already outlined. It's an iOS device that I'm using. And second, it doesn't tell me if the publisher included image descriptions. It just says that if they did the Kindle for PC app will read them. So that leaves me a little bit less confident that I'm going to be able to fully enjoy this book. If there are images with important information in them. I may not be able to read their description. I may be left out. So let's say I'm not going to buy this book right now. I'm going to back out and I'm going to search for another book. Maybe a different book will have different accessibility information. Discover a new book. Done. Button. Done. Dragging Mason County. Search field. There's a search field. Insertion. What's in there? D. And you're going to search for a different book. Result. The Giver. Giver Quartet. Book one. Lois Lowry. Book not downloaded. Button. OK. And again, I'm going to open the book details. Alert book details. Book detail. Discover new books. The Giver. Giver Quartet. Book one in Lois Lowry. Going to jump to the about the Kindle Edition section. Text select headings about the Kindle Edition heading level two. And we're going to explore this bullet link due to its large file size. This book may take longer to download bullet link length to 139 pages. Link bullet word wise enabled bullet enhanced typesetting enabled bullet page flip enabled link from the publisher heading level three. So this book, it does not say it's screen reader supported at all. So that leads me to believe I may not be able to read even the text of this book. Now, there is one other way I can get a sense of how accessible a book might be. And that is by downloading and reading the sample. And we already passed the sound load sample link.  We're headings about the Kindle Edition book over download sample button heading. Well, it's samples. I'm going to do that download sample heading. Read now link and going to read now. Opening Kindle double tap for menu. And we're going to explore this just for a minute image. The title page reads the giver written by Lois Laurie published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Boston, New York image contents link cover link title page link contents link copyright link dedication link chapter 15 link chapter 16 link chapter copyright link image copyright copy a division of Harper Collins publishers 195 Broadway East 978 05 dedication link for all the children to whom we entrust the future one link it was almost December and Jonas was beginning to be frightened. No, wrong word. Jonas thought frightened meant that deep. Sickening feeling of something terrible about to happen. Frightened was the way he had felt a year ago when an unidentified aircraft had overflown the community twice. OK, I think that's enough. So it does seem like I'm able to read the text of this book. But images are less certain. I mean, I've already been told that the Kindle for iOS app doesn't support them. And I think I think that's been proven because that first page, the cover page, it just said image. It didn't describe that image to me.  And even the text is still like I'm still not 100 percent confident in that because while the text I've been able to read so far has been accessible because it's not specified as being accessible. There could be problems later on in the book where maybe some text is not properly accessible and I could end up missing out on something. Because, yeah, because it's not certified as being accessible, I don't have that assurance that it is. So again, I'm less likely to buy this book and, you know, all of a sudden Amazon and the author and the publisher have all lost a sale because the book is not identified as being fully accessible to me. So let's say I really want to read this book. Let's say I want to try a different platform. Maybe, maybe Kobo has it in a fully accessible format. Maybe I'll be able to read the book fully on Kobo. So let's switch to the Kobo app. App switcher, Kindle, Voice Dream, Kobo Books, Active. Kobo Books, Sync Library, Sync Library. I want to do the same thing. We're going to search for the same book. Evox, Search, Button. Here's the search field. Search, Cancel, Button. Search for Books or Audio Books, Text Field. Insertion point at end. Search for the same title. In my books, Z in Store, 164, Filters. The giver by Lois Laurie, 145. The giver. And we're going to explore this detail screen. A Newberry Award winner. Giver Quartet number one by Lois Laurie, Rate. Save Preview. Want to get the full book? Reviews, 19, Synopsis. In Lois Lowry's Newberry Medal winning classic, 12 year old Jonas lives in a seemingly ideal world. Not until he is given, select this to read full description of this book, Link. Maybe it's behind here. Select this to back button. Synopsis, in Lois Lowry's Newberry Medal winning classic, life in the community where Jonas lives is not until he is given his life assignment as the told with deceptive simplicity. This is the giver has become one of the most influential the giver has become. OK, so I just expands the synopsis. It does not open other information about the book. So let's go back. The giver, a Newberry Award winner, Giver Quartet number one to get the reviews, 19, in Lois Lowry, select this to read full description. OK, here's where we were related titles. Son by Lois Laurie, Son by Lois Laurie. Oh, OK. And that's the end of the screen. So no, there is no accessibility information about this book on Kobo either. So again, I'm left to uncertain as to how accessible it will be. But maybe maybe that's just the book. Maybe Kobo will have a dragging Mason County in an accessible format. And it'll maybe it'll tell me about that. So let's go back. Let's get out of here and search for that. Cancel the giver button, the giver text field text. Captee, dragging Mason, dragging Mason County by Curtis Campbell, narrated by Justin Miller. Filters, dragging Mason County by Curtis Campbell. And we're going to do the same thing. Dragging Mason County by Curtis Campbell. Rate, restore to library, but want to get the full book? Reviews, zero synopsis, a timely tale of friendship, self-acceptance, and the importance of proper contouring. Select this to read full description of this book. Link also available as audio book related titles. One small thing by Aaron Watt. Someone else's summer by someone else's. Okay, so again, we've reached the end of the details screen and there is no mention of accessibility. So I am, it's left up in the air whether or not it's accessible. Now, like with Kindle, I can open a sample of the book to determine how accessible it is. So let's go and do that. Review, want to get restore to library button. And it says restore to library because I've run through this before. Downloading, dim. Just the same. Read preview, button. Read the preview. Close the book. Book is opened. Cover, Dragging Mason County by Curtis Campbell. Making a scene in the middle of nowhere. Image, the snouts of a cow, an alpaca, and a she-chew with the bright green wig of a drag performer. The upper part of the performer's face shows one raised eyebrow and heavy makeup. Image, close the book, button. Next page, button. Next page. One of six in chapter. Serves a hilarious, heartwarming story of acceptance and bravery. All while boasting a sickening cast of characters with charisma, uniqueness, nerd, and talent to spare. M-dash. Eric J. Brown. Okay, so again, it does seem like I'm able to read the text of this book. And it also seems that I'm able to read image descriptions for this book. You heard the cover image, which was certainly not described in the Kindle app. It was described in the Kobo app. So it seems like Kobo does have this book in an accessible form. But because they don't tell me that, I could have easily missed this. If I didn't think to open the sample or if I didn't have time to explore the sample, I would have passed right by this book because it's not listed as accessible. So again, they may have lost out on a sale. In this case, not because the book is inaccessible, but because they don't market that because the metadata is not there, which is very disappointing. But let's check Apple Books because Apple is a company that is well known for its commitment to accessibility. And let's see if that extends to their books and how much accessibility information they share about them. App Switcher. What do you switch to? Voice Dream. Safari. Books. Active. Apps. Books. Search. Heading. Books and audio books. Search field. Search field. Search field. Search field. Search field. Search field. Search field. Type. Mason. Gretchen's Miss. Dragging Mason. Dragging Mason. Dragging Mason County by Curtis Campbell. Dragging Mason County. Curtis Campbell. Book. Zero stars. Zero ratings. Dragging Mason. Close. And again, let's explore the detailed screen for this book. Cover. Image. Dragging Mason County. Heading. Author. Curtis. Give. Button. More actions. Button. Buy for $10.99. Want to read. A. Sample. Button. View the audio book. Dragging Mason County. Unabridged by Curtis Campbell. Heading. Small Town Connections. Highlight Square Small Town Life. With an F. More. Button. Heading. Peter Tompkins.  Has gone viral. An F. More. Button. Genre. Young Adult. Released. 2023. October 3rd. Language. EN. English. Length. 312. Pages. Publisher. On Eat Press. Seller. Ed on Canada. Size. 2.0. MB. More audio books by Curtis Campbell. Dragging Mason County. Unabridged. Curtis. Top books and fiction for young adult. Killing Mr. Griffin by Lois Duncan. OK, so we're getting into the related books, which tells me we're past the information for this book. And again, there is no information about how accessible it is. So that could mean it's not accessible, or that could mean it is, but they don't pass the information on. Which again leaves me less than completely certain about buying this book. Now again, I could open the sample and perhaps get a better idea. But I've demonstrated that twice already. So I'm going to skip that. So online bookstores share very little information about how accessible their books are. So it falls to a third party source to compile and share that information. One website experimenting with doing that is CatDB, or the Canadian Accessible Title Database. So what I can do is I can go to their website, which I have open in a browser. App switcher, book kit, voice tree, safari, active. Open that up. Search titles by ISBN. Title, keyword and description. Search field is editing. Search, landmark, search, insertion point at start. Their site for a book. So I'm going to search for the same book. Cat raw, G, in G, space, dragging. Eh, eh, on, space, Mason. Caps lock off. What was on? Why? OK. CatDB. Here we go. Search results, heading level one. At the results. Dragging Mason County, heading level two. Link, Curtis Campbell. And we found the correct book. Accessibility, heading level three. So here's accessibility information for this book. Elements, unknown, white bullet, list start. Accessibility summary, click to filter by, link. This title has been graded against WCAG 2.0 and meets AA requirements. This book contains print page numbers, reading order, structural navigation, table of contents, page list, landmarks, and all text for all images. Additionally, blank pages have been removed from the ebook while their page break labels have been left in for reasons of structural flow. White bullet. EPUB accessibility specification 1.0AA click to filter by. White bullet. Table of contents navigation click to filter by. Link, white bullet. Reading order click to filter by. Link, white bullet. Short alternative descriptions click to filter by. Link, white bullet. Print equivalent page numbering click to filter by. Link, white bullet. Language tagging provided click to filter by. Link, list end. Book description, heading level three. So there's much more detailed accessibility information for this book on CatDB. Not only does it confirm that image descriptions are provided, but it also tells me that it has a logical reading order. It has a accessible table of contents. And it even tells me which accessibility standards the book meets. So that leaves me feeling much more confident about purchasing this book. So if I keep going. A timely tale of friendship, ellipsis. Pass the synopsis. More information for dragging Mason County. Link, dragging Mason County by Curtis Campbell. Link, view on Kobo. Link, view on Amazon. Link, image and main. So there are links to view on Kobo and Amazon, which suggests to me that that's where CatDB is aware of these books being fully accessible. Now we already know that the Kobo for iOS app supports all text for images where Kobo for, or Kindle for iOS does not. So what we're going to do is we're going to open it up in Kobo. And normally this is where I would double tap that Kobo link and buy it, but to avoid having my credit card information displayed on my screen in a live recording, we're gonna return to the Kobo app and view the sample because I think that will demonstrate the point I wanna make next just as well as the full book would. App switcher, books, Kobo books, active. Kobo books, one of six in chapter. Here's the sample we've already downloaded. So I'm just gonna read a little bit and let's see how this goes. Serves a hilarious, heartwarming story of acceptance and m-dash. Okay, this is the introductory stuff. I don't need that. I'm gonna just get to the next page to get past this and get to the first chapter. Page two of 29. Draft serves a hilarious, heartwarming m-dash phrase. That's the same page. Page two of 29. Page two of two. Page two of two. Page two, serve. Okay, I can't turn the page that way. I'm gonna have to, where is it? Next page, button. Next page, two of six in chapter. Is a timely book about it. This gem of a novel is chock full of humor, heart, a worthy and important phrase. Read next page, two of six in chapter. Next page, button. Next page, three of six in chapter. Heading, a hilarious rock, Canada's drag rate. Three of six in chapter. Where's the top of this page? Is an m-dragging Mason County. I love Peters. Okay, I think you get the idea here. It's gonna get a little bit frustrated. So what's going on here is the Kobo app is not very well optimized for use with voiceover. What I was trying to do there was to flip the page with a gesture, but that is not supported in this app. I had to locate the next page button at the bottom of the screen. And then I had to swipe around and try to find the top of the next page to start reading from the beginning. That would get very irritating very quickly and just not conducive to enjoying a book. But unfortunately, because I bought this book from Kobo, I have to use the Kobo app to read it. And that's because of DRM or digital rights management. That is the technology that prevents all of us from illegally copying and sharing books that we bought, which is important, but it has a side effect of limiting how we can read our books, which for readers with accessibility needs means a little bit more than for some other situations. There are apps out there that are designed for blind people. They work really well with voiceover, but I can't just buy a book from Kobo or Kindle or Apple books for that matter and open it in those apps. I have to use the app for the bookstore that I've purchased the book from. Whereas if I had purchased this book from a DRM free source, I would be able to open the book in any app that I chose, perhaps one that's much more optimized for use with voiceover. And this is where services like Nels are so important. It's very legal source of DRM free books. If I got a book from Nels, I can open it in an app I'm comfortable with that works really well for me. Now, unfortunately, I was not able to find this particular book on Nels, but I downloaded a different book from the Nels website and I've loaded it into Voice Stream Reader, which is a popular app among blind readers. So I'm going to quickly open that up and demonstrate that. App switcher, book Kindle, act, Voice Stream, active. Voice Stream Reader, library, but I have a book open here and I can find the text. Heading, text, a nuanced, complex. And I can quickly swipe to turn the page. A nuanced, complex and highly original novel, equal parts harrowing and illuminating. Charles U, network conditions. Click here to sign up, already a subscriber? Provide your email again so we can register this ebook ideation. My transliteration from Cantonese and Japanese was done in an app. Okay, so I can keep flipping the page one at a time with a quick gesture. Or if I don't want to read like that, I can find the play button near the bottom. 1%. Navigation unit, pass. Play, select play button, adjustable. And press that. It's been over 30 years and so I am taking a chance that things have cooled down. You might not know much about what. And I could just let that read to me until I tell it to stop or until the book finishes. So that is much more convenient, is much more efficient to read that way than with the Kobo app, having to manually find the next page button every time and then finding the top of the next page. Now, one other alternative to DRM is a solution from EDR Lab called Redium LCP. And this is a DRM solution that protects against illegal copying without degrading the accessibility of an e-book and without requiring readers to sign up for all sorts of third party accounts to be able to read all their books. In Canada, Demark distributes e-books protected by Redium LCP. And you can learn more about Redium LCP by going to EDR Lab's website, www.edrlab.org, or I'm sure you could contact either EDR Lab or Demark who I'm sure would be happy to tell you more about Redium LCP. But I hope this presentation has given you a good understanding of the importance of accessibility metadata and the role it plays in being able to discover accessible e-books. The topic of DRM is also really important because while none of us are encouraging piracy, restricting accessibility also leads to lost sales and is not a solution. The solution is for publishers to produce accessible books, provide information about the accessibility of these books and for bookstores to pass that information along so that all readers will know if a book will meet their needs and will be able to read every book that they want to. Thank you.