Accessibility to people with disabilities is a required feature of the purchased product. Product accessibility will be evaluated based on the responses to the accessibility requirements checklist included as a part of this RFP. Products that meet the accessibility requirements or have a commitment to meet both the required and desired accessibility features will be given priority over proposals that do not meet the requirements or do not state an interest to meet the requirements in future releases of the product or service. If your products currently do not meet the accessibility requirements, you are still encouraged to submit a proposal if you state a commitment and schedule to include the requirements in future releases.
These requirements are based on the United States Federal Section 508 Information Technology Accessibility Standards and W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 Double-A web accessibility requirements.
Priority identifies a required feature from a feature that is highly desired.
D: Desirable feature
R: Required feature
2Response Code
The following table of codes must be used in responding to this RFP:
A: Standard
B: Requires non-code modification
C: Requires code modification
D: Avail. In Release xx.xx expected mm/yyyy
E: Can't be met
3Comments
Comments should be used provide more detailed description of accessibility
features for the each requirement. For example first version feature appeared,
testing with people with disabilities,
participaiton in accessibility standards groups, and etc..
Web Technologies Purchasing Requirements Checklist
Resources
are created and designed using HTML, xhtml,
css, mathml, SMIL, SVG and
other open standards with features to support accessibility by people with
disabilities. The W3C Web Content
Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 provides the features that should be part of
an accesible markup language.
Avoid Technologies with Poor
Accessibility Support
Adobe
Flash and other proprietary web development languages that have limited
accessibility features are not used for primary content and if
included are only included as equivalents to resources that
are accessible. The primary interface is the accessible interface and
non-accessible version(s) can be selected by user action or configuration.
Each resource in a website has a unique
title that is easily identifable by assistive technoogies, for HTML this means
using the title and h1 elements. Web applications
must update the title information to reflect the current state and changes in
task of the web application.
All major/minor topics have section
headers, for HTML this means using properly nested h2-h6 elements
within the web page. The section heading text provides useful orientation
information to the content and features on the page. Web applications should
update headers to reflect the current state and changes in content and task.
Note: For HTML heading markup should not be used to only
stylize text and the heading h1 is reserved for titling the
resource.
Link text is descriptive of the target
of the link. The same link text is not used to point to different URIs and
references to the same URI use the same link text. Note:
Common link problems include "click here", "more" and other link text that
assumes content of the link from the surrounding content.
HTML image maps (client and server side)
have redundant text links, since graphical browsers do not provide a means to
render alt text for area element and server side
image maps do not provide the browser with any link information. Redundent text
links can be styled to the users perceptual needs.
Navigation bars and menus
within web resources use ul and li elements as markup for
the list of options and provide a title for the navigation bar with an
h2element or other header. Header may be hidden using CSS
techniques.
All HTML form
controls (input, select, button
andtextarea elements) have an effective label element
associated with each control to identify the purpose of the form control in the
resource, usually using the label element. Groups of related form
controls must use headings or fieldset and legend
elements to indicate the relationship of the controls within the
group.
Data tables use caption
element to title the data table, summary attribute to provide a
summary of why the table was included in the resources, th
elements for indicating header cells, th.id attribute to uniquely
identify each header cell and td.headers attributes indicate
header cells associated with each data cell. The axis element
maybe used to provide supplementary relationship information.
Frames need to provide a descriptive
title for each frame to understand the purpose of the frame within a web page
using the title attribute. Frames used for client/server
interaction or frames that do not contain viewable content and marked as
title='hidden'. In general frames cause accessibility problems and
should be avoided.
Images within each web resource have
text equivalents. Images are used for a variety of purposes within web
resources, so the type of text equivalent is dependent on how the image is
being used.
Stylistic or Positioning Images
The
alt attribute should be set to null alt="
Stylistic and positioning images should be moved to CSS to improve
interoperability
Logos and Supporting Images
The
alt attribute should be used to provide the name of the
organization or provide short title for the image
Images used as
Links
The alt attribute should be used to indicate the
target of the link
Informative Images
The alt
attribute should be used to give the image a short title to help people
understand the content of the image
A longer description, ideally as
part of the resource narrative, describing the features of the image should be
included.
Charts and graphs should use data tables or list markup to
provide numerical summaries and provide the data used to generate the
chart.
Math Equations
Equations should also be available in
MathML format.
Provide Equivalents for
other Graphical or Programmatic Objects
Other types of embedded media for graphics, audio or video
objects have text descriptions so people with disabilities know what
information they are not able to access, regardless of the accessibility of the
object. This is important for reporting accessibility problems to content
providers or requesting information be a provided in an accessible
format.
Color cannot be the only means to convey
information. When color styling is changed or the content is rendered in black
and white the content of the page can still be understood.
Dynamic and popup menus are created
using ul and li and CSS techniques for rendering menu
content and links, rather than using scripting to insert, delete and position
menu items by manipulating the Document Object Model. Scripting is primarily
used to emulate CSS techniques that are not directly supported by browsers like
Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 for hiding and positioning links in the dynamic
menu.
Frequently used
functions have keyboard shortcuts. Keyboard shortcuts can be easily enabled or
disabled by the user through a configuration setting or link on the web
resource. Once keyboard shortcuts are enabled or disabled they remain in that
state until the end of the current session or until the user changes the state.
Keyboard shortcuts are part of the documentation of the resource.
Dynamically generated or changing
content has been tested with screen reader technology to make sure that it can
be accessed with speech and refreshable Braille technologies.