vpats 101 mary utt 30 april 2009 “accessibility provides the opportunity to disrupt your...

VPATs 101

Mary Utt30 April 2009

“Accessibility provides the opportunity to disrupt your competitors, capture new markets and achieve remarkable ROI.”

Mike Paciello

© 2009 by The Paciello Group, LLC. All rights reserved. Proprietary and Confidential.

TPG_Reviewing_VPATs.ppt

What is a VPAT?

Voluntary Product Accessibility Template

A snap shot of a product’s current accessibility against the Section 508 (Rehabilitation Act) standard

Required part of Federal IT procurement

3-column table:

1.The criterion or standard; e.g., keyboard execution of all product functions

2.The product’s level of support; e.g., “Supports,” “Does not support,” “Supports with exceptions,” etc.

3.Remarks/explanations

Example VPAT page (Novell VPAT on Internet)


filename.ppt

Working with VPATs

Company initiative: create VPATs for hundreds of products

Government contractor: accessibility is mandated

Centralized testing group, located in India

Partnership with TPG to review VPATs:

Technical review against in-house test procedures

Editorial review for language, examples, detail



Evolution within the company

Updating test and violation reporting procedures

Creating test procedures for mainframe and other legacy product types

Providing training in using assistive technologies

Providing training in testing products for accessibility

Creating a knowledge base of information:

Help desk

Wiki

FAQ

Repository for guidelines, templates


filename.ppt

Current work: decentralizing VPATs

India group: consulting and training

Moving accessibility testing into development groups

VPAT required for product GA

Training required to create VPAT

TPG is now working with QA and development groups in India,

China, Eastern Europe, Australia, many US locations



Future work

Violation reporting: moving from recording accessibility violations to creating defects for developers to fix

New 508 standards coming: more stringent and more documentation (test results) required

Mandatory, not voluntary

Guidelines and test procedures will change but the groundwork will be laid within the company to continue evolving toward accessible products



Some resources

Section 508 standard: http://www.section508.gov/index.cfm?&FuseAction=Content&ID=12

ITIC VPAT guidelines:http://www.itic.org/archives/articles/20040506/faq_voluntary_product_accessibility_template_vpat.php

Access Board

http://www.access-board.gov/sec508/guide/index.htm

Web:http://webaim.org/

http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/IRS (1194.21) guidelines:

http://www.section508.gov/IRSCourse/resources/index.html

http://www.section508.gov/IRSCourse/mod02/020101--.html



vpats 101 mary utt 30 april 2009 “accessibility provides the opportunity to disrupt your...

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