When you are purchasing accessibility services it’s very important to understand what you are being sold and what you actually need.
So keep the focus in on we want to make our digital asset accessible, how do we do that?
Well first you have to find the accessibility issues that exist and then you have to remediate or fix those accessibility issues so that they are eliminated and thereby you have in an accessible digital asset.
That is what you need.
Now you may want documentation that speaks to that accessibility so if you do then that would be additionally what you need so you might need a VPAT or more correctly an ACR.
You might want that or need that for procurement purposes or just to demonstrate and address- have an accounting of accessibility.
You may want to conformant statement that in effect certifies at least part of your digital asset as accessible – you may want that as well.
But those are what you really need and want.
So knowing that what else is being sold to you at under the pretenses of it helps with that.
And knowing that is very important because you may end up bargaining for or not really bargaining for but being sold something additional that you do not need and/or want for accessibility.
So let’s take let’s take the example of a scan.
You can you can scan single pages of your website for free.
You may be sold as scan where the scan is said to work for your entire website.
You have to decide whether or not you need that and whether or not that is practical.
In most cases it will not be practical it will not be helpful because what do I need to scan my entire website for when I still need to focus in on just 10 pages and yes maybe the scan can catch things in distant pages but with those distant pages be accounted for if we were applying our accessibility audits site wide.
So you have to decide whether or not you really need that full scan.
Let’s just- let’s take let’s take accessibility widgets or overlays.
You don’t need those, but you’re likely being sold those under this idea that, okay we can make your we have a solution and it’s a stopgap or a temporary hold on accessibility and so you need to have this overlay on your website in addition to, maybe, accessibility services.
Well the overlays don’t work so you definitely don’t need those so are you being sold those, yes.
Do you need those, no.
Do they help, no.
They’re really just a construct of the industry and needing- trying to make a case for not only accessibility but a business case for having these widgets on your website and that’s not needed.
So you don’t need that.
So what the point of this video is you have to decide what it is you need to accomplish your objective and there are some things that are unnecessary and there are some things that actually work against your objective.
And it all comes down to finding the accessibility issues, fixing the accessibility issues, and then optionally document- documenting the remediation or the accessibility of your digital asset.
