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by evunveot
2560 days ago
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I'm in the same boat, but I'm just a contract web developer for a college within a public university. Turns out the university now requires outside "vendors" to provide a Voluntary Product Accessibility Template [0] and they're not allowed to purchase any "products" that aren't WCAG 2.0 AA. The VPAT essentially lists every individual WCAG guideline and asks to what level your "product" is compliant. This came up because my client within the college is trying to get approval for me to make some updates to the site (which I built for them 4 years ago, taking pains for accessibility before they even had a policy about it) to align with new branding guidelines which are also being imposed from above by the university. I've tried to argue that the VPAT doesn't make any sense because they're not buying a "product" from me, they're paying me to do original work, so if anything they should provide me a VPAT as a form of specification. But the feedback I'm getting is that I should essentially pretend that the "product" is the entire website (including all the content added by college staff over the years), which means I'm supposed to essentially audit every page against the VPAT, or lie and say I did (which I would never do). My only remaining tack is to appeal to the undue burden they're imposing on my small business. Never mind that the website I built for the college is demonstrably more accessible than that of the university itself. [0] https://www.itic.org/policy/accessibility/vpat |
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However, they should include in any new contract for contract work that the end result be accessible according to their standards (WCAG 2.0 AA). A VPAT could be used as a template for documenting the accessibility of the newly completed work but there are better options. If they wanted documentation of the accessibility of the existing site, before you make any changes, and they wanted it in VPAT format, again, there are better tools but that should be considered separate, additional work.