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Overview
Depending on your needs, there are a variety of resources and strategies to help you buy accessible products, solutions, and services. Most purchases require buyers to provide accessibility information about the product, and/or accept accessibility language in contracts.
Types of Purchases
Most IT purchases fall into one of three categories: Goods (“commodities” or “commercial of the shelf software” or COTS), Services (e.g., "interpreting services") and Professional/Technical Services (such as creating websites or configuring software. Each uses a different process to promote accessible technology.
The procurement process for IT commodities/COTS typically requires vendors to submit VPATs (Voluntary Product Accessibility Templates) detailing the accessibility of their products. Check the VPATs section for guidance for all parties in the process, from RFP creators to vendors.
Visit the Accessibility Master Contract program on the Department of Administration (ADM) site for information on video captioning and document creation and remediation services. Note: Captioning, which helps make video accessible, is distinct from CART, which is an accommodation (see below) for live meetings and conference calls. See the Captioning section in Multimedia for more information.
Policy Driven Adoption for Accessibility (PDAA)
PDAA is a tool that allows vendor organizations to measure their internal support for accessibility. The stronger an organization’s support for accessibility, the more likely their products and services will be accessible and usable.
The State of Minnesota is partnering with other states to pilot PDAA, with the goal of increasing the accessibility of vendors' products and services. More information:
Accommodations
Need to obtain interpreter services or other communications support? Check out the page on how to order ASL/CART services.
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Products
Voluntary Product Accessibility Templates (VPATs®) are a tool to measure an organization’s ability to demonstrate their product’s support for accessibility within the confines of a proposal or bid. It does not replace acceptance testing upon delivery, third-party testing, other accessibility verification, and end-user testing. It is best used as a component when scoring vendor proposals.
Properly completing a VPAT results in an Accessibility Conformance Report (ACR).
All solicitations for IT products, whether COTS (commercial off the shelf) or as part of an integration offering, must include a requirement for an ACR. When including requirements for a completed VPAT, be sure to request that the vendor provide either:
- Information on all interfaces within the ACR, or
- Separate ACRs for each user interface.
We require vendors to use the INT version of the ITI VPAT (see link below), which incorporates both the updated Section 508 rule and WCAG 2.1. (We do not require vendors to complete the EU portion.) In addition, we provide some background and guidance for all parties in the process.
If you are buying a non-standard IT product or buying with your Authority of Local Purchase (ALP), then you should still require the vendor to provide you a completed VPAT with information about the accessibility of the product.
Many companies provide completed Accessibility Conformance Reports for their products on their web site. This is a great way to facilitate procurement by government entities.
Did you know?
All desktop and laptop computers in the MNIT standards program are accessible.
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Professional Services
There is no single way to best ensure when soliciting vendors to perform IT services that the vendor will effectively incorporate accessibility best practices into their work. There are a variety of tools and strategies to use, depending on the type of project and how you solicit the services.
- Have the vendor complete a PDAA worksheet (see the section on PDAA).
- If deliverables include digital documents, include Expectations for Accessible Documents in the contract.
- Require the vendor to submit prior examples of their work. If an application or other non-website product, ask for the VPATs of their prior work.
- Perform accessibility tests (either in-house or via a third-party vendor) on prior work.
- Run a WAVE test on their website, and perform the keyboard-only test. If their website is fairly accessible, chances are, they’re use to thinking about accessibility.
- Ask if any of their employees have IAAP certification.
Did you know?
Including accessibility requirements from the beginning dramatically reduces costs in the long-run.
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Resources
Here are some resources and references:
Did you know?
Including accessibility requirements from the beginning dramatically reduces costs in the long run.
