Strategy

SECTION 508: A Plan of Action

The Federal Government has changed the way it buys information technology products: agencies must now purchase products that address the provisions of the accessibility standard. Agencies now expect IT vendors to provide information on the accessibility of their products.

To remain competitive, your company needs to decide how to respond to this challenge. You need to understand the new law, see how it applies to your products, and decide how to present your products to the government and to the concerned public in general.

Our firm has the experience, the information, and the insights that can help your company deal with this new law effectively and systematically, and can lead your management team through the process of forming a strategy for responding to 508. We can collaborate with your technical staff in assessing your products. And we can help your sales staff promote the accessibility of your products in the forums where government buyers find out about IT accessibility of specific vendor products.

Our process involves three steps: Strategy Development, Product Assessment, and Accessibility Registration and Reporting. Depending on your needs, you may select any or all of these steps to help you in addressing 508.

Strategy Development – It is essential that the senior management of your corporation understand the impact of section 508 on your company. We will lead your management team to appreciate the intent of the new law, its impact on your company, what your competition is doing about it, and choices you have in responding to it. Included in this step or the consultancy are two components:

Awareness – Educating key parts of your company about 508, briefing your executive management team, your legal department, your sales and marketing management, and your senior product development staff on the law and the issues of particular importance to each of their corporate functions.

Strategy Workshop – Working with key members of the Sales, Marketing, and Engineering staff to lay out your strategy for dealing with 508.

Product Assessment –Industry has worked with GSA to design a method for representing this information on a product-by-product basis. Our consulting process uses your own technical team to evaluate one of your products and to produce a Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT), which is a report on the accessibility features of a single IT product against the section 508 accessibility standard. This report can be used by marketing and sales for responding to the accessibility questions on solicitations such as RFQ’s, RFP’s, and RFI’s. This report can also be used to drive some of the product requirements for the next version of the product.

Your technical staff will participate in the assessment process and become familiar with accessibility issues. They will learn the process of preparing a product assessment. This enables your own resources to repeat the process on other company products. In addition, their mastery of the product assessment process will allow them to develop future products with accessibility provisions from the start.

Accessibility Registration and Promotion – How you will use the product assessment will depend on the strategy developed in the first step and the result of the assessment phase: Some vendors choose to promote the accessibility aspects of their products. Some enroll in GSA’s "Buy Accessible" program and integrate it into their corporate messages on their web sites. But some choose to keep the information confidential to be used when responding to RFQ’s.

We can lead your team in developing messages putting the accessibility information in the places that give you an advantage in the federal marketplace. If you choose, we will work with your sales team in getting your information registered with GSA’s Buy Accessible program.