The University of Washington strives to ensure that IT products developed at, purchased by, or used at the University are accessible to all faculty, students, and staff, including those with disabilities. To reach this goal, those responsible for making decisions about which products to procure must consider accessibility as one of the criteria for acquisition. This is especially critical for enterprise-level systems and other technologies that affect a large number of students, faculty, and/or staff.
On February 18, 2025, Andreas Bohman, Vice President & CIO of UW Information Technology, sent an email to all our technology vendors, suppliers, and contractors, thanking them for their ongoing partnership in ensuring the UW is compliant with federal digital accessibility requirements. The full text of the ADA Digital Accessibility letter is available on the Procurement Services website.
Anyone making procurement or licensing decisions on behalf of the UW has responsibility to consider accessibility of the product or service within the procurement process. Accessibility should be considered at each of the following three steps in the procurement process.
Step 1: Solicit accessibility information.
As explained in the ADA Digital Accessibility Letter described above, suppliers are expected to have available an Accessibility Conformance Report (ACR) for each of their products and services, documenting their current state of accessibility as measured by the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 Level AA (the accessibility standard we are expected to meet at the UW). Completing an ACR is a standard business practices that all technology vendors are expected to be familiar with. ACRs are typically created from a Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT), a standard form for this purpose that’s available from the Information Technology Industry Council. Third-party evaluations are encouraged, especially for suppliers who have insufficient expertise in-house to be able to accurately audit their own product or service for accessibility.
Step 2: Validate accessibility information received.
When suppliers provide the information requested about the accessibility of their products or services as explained in the preceding section, these materials will need to be reviewed and verified. When reviewing a supplier’s ACR, consider the following questions:
- Does the ACR include all required information? At a minimum, it should include the name and version of the product, the report date, contact information for follow-up questions related to the report, and a description of the evaluation methods used to complete the report. There are several additional fields that are required as per the instructions at the top of the VPAT form.
- Is the ACR reasonably current? The report should reflect the product’s current state of accessibility. If the report date is more than a few months old, the information is likely to be out-of-date unless the product has not been updated during that time.
- Who completed the report? A report prepared by an independent third-party accessibility consultant is more credible than a self-report prepared by the supplier.
- How accessible is the product? The report consists primarily of a table with three columns: Criteria, Conformance Level, and Remarks/Explanations. The Criteria column lists each of the WCAG 2.x success criteria. The Conformance Level column is a multiple choice field, in which the supplier declares whether their product “Supports”, “Partially Supports”, or “Does Not Support” each of the criteria (“Not applicable” and “Not evaluated” or also options). An ACR that declares 100% accessibility (i.e., “Supports” on every criteria) is suspicious, as perfectly accessible products are extremely rare. A fully transparent ACR that accurately acknowledges the product’s accessibility problems is preferred over an ACR with a perfect score, unless that perfect score is credibly explained in the Remarks/Explanations column.
- After reading the ACR, do you understand how people with disabilities will use the product, and what challenges they might encounter? The Remarks/Explanations column should provide sufficient detail for you to be able to answer Yes to this question. Details should be provided for each criterion, regardless of the declared Conformance Level for that criterion.
- Assuming the ACR acknowledges that the product has accessibility problems, when can you expect the supplier to have fixed the problems identified? This information is not typically provided in the ACR itself, but should be requested in a follow-up conversation with the supplier. As explained in the ADA Digital Accessibility Letter described at the top of this page, suppliers are expected to provide an accessibility roadmap indicating their plan for resolving the accessibility issues identified in their ACR.
If the product or service is high risk (e.g., large number of expected users, critical functionality, high likelihood that the population of intended users will include individuals with disabilities), accessibility testing may be required in order to validate the claims of the supplier. See the Digital Accessibility Checklist for guidance on the types of issues that should be checked. In particular, one easy test that anyone can perform without specialized tools or a deep knowledge of accessibility is: Test the product with a keyboard. Anything that can be accessed with a mouse should also be accessible with keyboard alone. If a product fails the keyboard test, this is a strong indicator that the product has other accessibility problems as well.
If you need assistance testing a potentially high risk product or service, contact UW-IT Accessible Technology Services via our Help page.
Step 3: Include accessibility assurances in contracts.
All technology suppliers are expected to provide assurances that their product is either compliant with accessibility standards, or is working toward compliance within a reasonable timeline. The UW Terms and Conditions, maintained by Procurement Services, includes an IT Accessibility Rider (in PDF) which should be attached to all contracts for applicable goods and services.
Procurement Policy 7.2.15 (Procuring Accessible IT, in PDF) includes additional details, including specific procedures for addressing accessibility within the procurement process.