Building a Procurement Process around Accessibility

Handouts

Presented at 4:00pm in Meadowbrook I/II on Thursday, November 16, 2017.

#9177

Speaker(s)

  • Kara Zirkle, Accessible Technology Coordinator, Miami University

Session Details

  • Length of Session: 1-hr
  • Format: Lecture
  • Expertise Level: Beginner
  • Type of session: General Conference

Summary

Procurement is an important topic in regard to accessibility. But where do you start and how do you incorporate a process into it? This presentation is going to go over ways to begin incorporating accessibility into the procurement process. We'll review lessons learned and best practices.

Abstract

We all have a procurement process within our place of employment. How does accessibility play a role? When trying to ensure your using, procuring and maintaining accessible products do you have anyone asking the vendor or requester questions? Do you have someone who can test, use an automated testing software to review web products or someone who can read a VPAT? After creating a procurement process at George Mason and now building one at Miami, I'll go over lessons learned and best practices around how you can build a process of your own. I'll share workflows and discuss various areas of procurement to help ensure you gain a better understanding of your own environment to be able to walk away with ideas to implement.

Keypoints

  1. Learn best practices around building a procurement process.
  2. Learn to ask the right questions and review/read docs, use automated software to your advantage of testing.
  3. Gain knowledge of various workflow options to help build what will work for your environment.

Disability Areas

Cognitive/Learning, Deaf/Hard of Hearing, Mobility, Vision

Topic Areas

Administrative/Campus Policy, Legal, Other, Uncategorized

Speaker Bio(s)

Kara Zirkle

Ms. Zirkle has over 15 years experience working with individuals with disabilities. Kara has worked in Government and Higher Education. She is currently working at Miami University building accessibility procurement and policy. She worked at George Mason University prior for 9 years working closely with Enterprise Architecture reviewing accessibility. She works to ensure that Section 508 and WCAG 2.0 compliance of electronic and information technology (E&IT) is accessible to faculty, staff, students and public both with and without disabilities.

Handout(s)