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Thread: How do you assess your 3rd party vendors ?
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From: Will Skora
Date: Wed, May 09 2018 3:43PM
Subject: How do you assess your 3rd party vendors ?
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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
NOTICE: This e-mail message and all attachments transmitted with it are intended solely for the use of the addressees and may contain legally privileged, protected or confidential information. If you have received this message in error, and/or you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender immediately by e-mail reply and please delete this message from your computer and destroy any copies. Any unauthorized use, reproduction, forwarding, distribution, or other dissemination of this transmission is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful.
From: Brandon Keith Biggs
Date: Thu, May 10 2018 2:20AM
Subject: Re: How do you assess your 3rd party vendors ?
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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 ADDRESS 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
>
>
> NOTICE: This e-mail message and all attachments transmitted with it are
> intended solely for the use of the addressees and may contain legally
> privileged, protected or confidential information. If you have received
> this message in error, and/or you are not the intended recipient, please
> notify the sender immediately by e-mail reply and please delete this
> message from your computer and destroy any copies. Any unauthorized use,
> reproduction, forwarding, distribution, or other dissemination of this
> transmission is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful.
> > > > >
From: Bourne, Sarah (MASSIT)
Date: Thu, May 10 2018 1:03PM
Subject: Re: How do you assess your 3rd party vendors ?
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The U. S. General Services Administration (GSA) has been doing a lot of work on their section508.gov website, mostly to incorporate the switch to WCAG2 AA, but also to update and improve the information they provide on accessible procurement. You may the information on their " How to Request Accessibility Information from Vendors and Contractors" [1] page useful. The " How to Define Accessibility Provisions, Clauses, and Acceptance Criteria" [2] page has guidance on the kinds of testing you may want/need to do for custom development, including sample contract language. Both of those pages are linked to from their "Revised 508 Standards Refresh Toolkit" [3] which has other things that may help, too.
Another approach is look at the information GSA provides for vendors in the "Sell" section of their site, " Sell Accessible Products and Services" [4].
While your processes may not need to be as elaborate as the federal government's, there may be bits and pieces that you can adopt.
[1] https://section508.gov/refresh-toolkit/request-accessibility-information-from-vendors-and-contractors
[2] https://section508.gov/refresh-toolkit/accessibility-provisions
[3] https://www.section508.gov/refresh-toolkit
[4] https://www.section508.gov/content/sell-accessible
Sarah E. Bourne
Director of IT Accessibility
Executive Office of Technology Services and Security (EOTSS)
1 Ashburton Place, 8th Floor, Boston, MA 02108
Office: (617) 626-4502
= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = | www.mass.gov/eotss