Accessible Purchasing Overview

The Section 508 Information Technology Accessibility Standards are a comprehensive accessibility requirements that are used as the basis for purchasing accessible information technologies for the United States Federal Overnment. The following states use or have adapted the requirements for setting state standards:

• Illinois Information Technology Accessibility Act
• Massachusetts
• New York

State accessibility requirements are sometimes enhanced by including requiremenrs from the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

Purchasing Issues

Accessibility Statement

The accessibility statement is the information included in Request for Proposals (RFPs) and contracts that state the desired accessibility features for a product, web site or software application that vendors must address in their propoals or or agree to in contracts.

Compliance Template

Compliance templates provide a means for vendors to report on their compliance with accessibility requirements by identifying the features they support or do not support for accessibility of a product, web site or software application.

Products that do not meet all accessibility requirements can still submit proposals, but the compliance template must accurately state the accessibility of the product, web site or software application that the vendor would deliver if their proposal is selected or a contractual agreement is executed.

Purchasing Decision Making

People or groups reviewing proposals and contracts need to know how to use the accessibility information provided by the vendor to make accessibility an important part of the decision making process.

How do people reviewing accessibility complaince information verify the claims of a vendor before they make purchasing decisions.

Remediation

After the deliver of a product it mayboe found that the product does not meet have some of the accessibility features claimed by the vendor in the accessibility compliance report. There need to be proceedures and possible penalties for making the vendor aware of accessibility problems and how the accessibility problems will be resolved.

Types of Information Technologies

Accessible purchasing requirements must address the range of information and electronic office technologies that are purchased by the university to create and deliver instructional and administrative resources to students, faculty and staff. The following list outlines the major areas for purchasing accessible information technologies.

Web Technology

This includes instructional and administrative web resources based on html, javascript, Adobe PDF and other technologies designed to provide information and interaction through web browsers. This includes the next generation web applications, often referred to as Web 2.0, that add a new level of interactively through th euse of XML and javascript technologies with goal of providing web experiences similar to desktop applications.

Web Authoring Tools

Faculty creating electronic educational materials and staff supporting instructional efforts usually have little understanding of the markup details of web technologies. Most of these authors leave the markup details to the authoring tools and therefore the accessibility of the resources they create will depend on the authoring tools support for accessibility. Ideally the authoring tool guides and constrains the author into creating accessible markup, or "accessibility by default". Most authoring tools though do not support accessibility by default and require the author to have extensive knowledge about accessibility and in many cases do not even allow the author to create accessible content. In this case it could be called "accessibility by exception". Only when the author knows about accessibility and how to make the authoring tool create accessible content will the author produce accessible content. Clearly this later approach will severely limit the creation of accessible instructional and support materials.

Not only does the authoring tool need to support creating accessible web resources, but the authoring tool itself should be accessible to people with disabilities. For people with disabilities to fully participate as faculty, staff and students in the university they must also be able to create web resources. The information age is more than just accessing other peoples content, but also particpating in the creation of new content. See the next section on software accessibility for the details on accessible software requirements.

Multimedia

Audio or video resources can generically be labeled multimedia and include film, video and auditory tape and DVD technologies for playing on a traditional analog television or the new generation of flat screen HDTV. Audio needs text captions for people with hearing impairments and audio descriptions of visual action in videos for people with visual impairments. Technologies for the web like Quicktime, Real Media and Flash have the same requirements but are defined under web accessibility.

Software

Desktop software for Microsoft Windows®, Apple Macintosh®, Java® and the UNIX/LINUX operating systems all support accessibility to people with disabilities, but not all software developed for these operating systems support their accessibility features or test the accessibility of their software with people with disabilities. Accessibility in software means supporting keyboard only operation, supporting operating system styling preferences including high contrast display settings, and compatibility with alternative input and output assistive technologies like onscreen keyboards and screen magnification and reader technologoies for people with learning disabilities and visual impairments.

Electronic Equipment

Electronic office equipment inlcuding telephones, copy machines, fax machines, printers, scanners, computers other electronic office machines should be accessible to people with disabilities. Controls can be placed in locations and sizes that make it easier for people with physical limitations to reach and operate. Labeling should be as large as possible with high contrast between text foreground and background colors. Options for speech can help people with visual impairments and blindness operate equipment. The availability of these types of products is increasing due to the Section 508 Information Technology Accessibility Standards being published in 2000.

Legal Requirements for Accessibility

Progammatic accessibility is considered a Civil Right in the United States and every IT purchase that is not accessible is violating the civil rights of people with disabilities. The Rehabilitation Act of 1973 was the first major legislation in the United States to require that government and public supported education be accessible to people with disabilities. The act mandates that educational institutions that receive federal aid must provide access to people with disabilities by making programmatic resources available in accessible formats at the same time it is received by eveyone else participating in the program. For information technologies this means the university should be using accessibility as part of its decision making process in purchasing web resources, software, electronic office equipment and computers. Purchasing priority needs to be given to technologies that are accessible to people with disabilities.