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Vendors Accessibility Purchasing Guidelines

for New and Renewal of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Products

In today's world, technology is changing the way we learn and work. Technology makes it easier to communicate, to collaborate on projects, to stay connected, to process work and educational information, and to personalize customer service. Our goal is to provide individuals with disabilities and those with age-related impairments an equitable opportunity to use our website and software products. Our request is for our vendors to provide individuals with disabilities the same opportunity of empowerment as they provide to others to be able to use their websites, hardware, and software solutions. Accessibility ICT solutions allow everyone to communicate effectively with the use of technology. Thus, we can offer everyone an opportunity for inclusiveness. Our request for the following information will assist us in identifying the vendors whose products are in conformance with the accessibility standards provided by the Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT).

Functional Owner: New and Renewal of ICT website and software products.

The UNF functional owner (the department point of contact purchasing the product) works with the ADA Compliance Office staff to ensure the product is accessible to individuals with disabilities. The functional owner looking to acquire ICT needs to complete the VPAT Acquisition Team Form and return it to ADA Compliance.

VENDOR Seeking to sell a new ICT product or process a renewal are required to submit to the ADA Compliance Office:

  1. Required document: VPAT Vendor Intake Form 1.24.2020 (Word document)
  2. Required document: VPAT Template ver. 2.4 (WCAG) (Word Document, Latest Version from the ITC. Additional Information about the VPAT is available on the ITC website. If you would like to download a VPAT template with instructions for the form you can download this file: VPAT Instructions with Template ver. 2.4 (WCAG)).The VPAT contains fields for the vendor to provide a brief product description, the evaluation methods used, fields to provide details for the type of product method test used to evaluate accessibility, and the results of the evaluation to comply with WCAG 2.1. ADA staff recommends vendors test their product(s) with a screen reader such as NVDA; NVDA screen reader is available to download to free.
  3. A sandbox site with login credentials, a sandbox is a test site version of the product. The ADA Compliance staff will conduct an independent review to determine WCAG 2.1 accessibility compliance. Assistive technology tools will be used to test the site along with an automated tool.