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Re: How do you assess your 3rd party vendors ?

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From: Brandon Keith Biggs
Date: May 10, 2018 2:20AM

Hello,
This is what I do for our private business:
I canvas all the possible vendors of a product before purchasing and ask
them for both either a statement of accessibility or a VPAT and if they
have an accessibility professional working for them.
If either are yes, then I look at them.
I go through all the major functions with NVDA to make sure it is usable
and the UX is good. If I spend more than a reasonable amount of time trying
to figure out something, then I say no.
Frankly though, most vendors don't make it past the first step, so if the
product is usable, then I'm forced to get it, even though the UX is not
very good. There are just not that many choices out there for accessible
software.
Thank you,


Brandon Keith Biggs <http://brandonkeithbiggs.com/>;

On Wed, May 9, 2018 at 2:43 PM, Will Skora < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

>
> For those who work at institutions (for example libraries, educational
> institutions, governments) that rely on 3rd party vendors for content, how
> do you, as an institution, assess them for accessibility?
>
> Our institution will be explicitly including accessibility as a part of
> our criteria for determining which
> 3rd party vendors (e-learning resources, databases, digital asset
> managements) to purchase.
>
> We're trying to determine a realistic (in our staff capacity) avenues to
> assess accessibility for current and prospective 3rd party vendors.
>
> Do you run any automated or user testing on 3rd party vendors?
> I've found about VPATs which can be a bit complex, and also not always an
> accurate representation of the vendors'
> actual sites/resources when I've conducted automated tests (a11ymachine,
> AXE) on their pages.
> Because what they state on a VPAT and what's in reality may not match, I'm
> leaning towards not using the VPATs at all.
>
> When you've found any discrepancy between a vendor's VPAT and your own
> testing and requested them to fix the compliance issue?
>
> For those not familiar with VPAT, check out
> https://vpats.wordpress.com/
> https://accessibility.oit.ncsu.edu/it-accessibility-at-
> nc-state/developers/accessibility-handbook/overview-understanding-the-
> nature-of-what-is-required-to-design-accessibly/voluntary-
> product-accessibility-template-vpat/
>
> With the aforementioned issues of VPAT, I'm considering adopting a
> criteria checklist provided by the ASCLA (I've uploaded to my library's
> website - https://cpl.org/wp-content/uploads/think_accessible_
> before_you_buy.pdf
> (Yes, I'm aware that it's a PDF).
> into a score-based rubric to go with our other criteria. Thoughts? Do you
> already have a score card? What assessment do you do?
>
> Thanks in advance for your attention and insight.
>
> Regards,
> Will Skora
> Web Developer
> Cleveland Public Library
>
>
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