For accessibility coordinators and programme managers
An accessibility claim that has not been tested by people who use assistive technology daily is a claim about intent, and we will not dress one up as a result. What is offered instead is a precise account of what has been designed for, a remediation commitment with a timeframe, and an invitation to have your own users test it before anybody signs anything.
The document arrives, it is thorough, and almost every row says the product supports the criterion. Then somebody who uses a screen reader every day opens the system and cannot complete the first task, because a control has no name, a status message is never announced, and a dialog puts focus somewhere that makes the rest of the page unreachable.
None of that is usually deceit. It is a self-assessment written by people who read a criterion carefully and then evaluated their own product against their reading of it, without anybody who depends on assistive technology in the room. The gap between reading a criterion and living with the result is enormous and it does not show up in a self-assessment by design.
Keyboard operability is where the everyday failures concentrate, and they are unglamorous. A menu that opens on hover and cannot be reached without a pointer. A custom control that is focusable but does not respond to the keys its role implies. A modal that traps focus, or worse, does not. A skip link that exists and points at the wrong region.
Then the failures that only appear over time: a status message announced twice, a table whose header association breaks when it wraps, a colour-coded state with no other indicator, and an error summary that is visually obvious and never reaches anybody who is not looking at it.
And underneath the technical work is the part that determines whether it gets done at all. Accessibility competes with a feature roadmap, the person who cares most rarely controls the backlog, and remediation is agreed in principle and scheduled behind whatever the business wants next quarter. A coordinator’s real question about a supplier is not what they claim — it is whether a defect gets fixed after the contract is signed.
No independent accessibility audit has been performed and no conformance report exists to hand over — so a procurement requiring one is closed, and no amount of design care changes that because the requirement is about an assessment rather than about a design.
That is the sentence a coordinator needs before anything else, and it is put first for the same reason the authorization page puts its own limit first: the reader checks for a living, the fact is checkable, and being caught by it later costs the whole relationship rather than one opportunity.
What exists is a set of design decisions that can be examined rather than trusted. Every interactive control is reachable and operable from a keyboard in the order the page reads. Structure is carried by real headings, lists, tables and landmarks rather than by styling that looks like structure. No state is conveyed by colour alone. Focus is visible, and it is moved deliberately and returned when a dialog closes. Text scales without content becoming unreachable, and the page reflows rather than requiring two-dimensional scrolling.
One property here is genuinely unusual and it belongs on an accessibility page even though it is rarely filed under one: the whole surface has a low-bandwidth mode that reduces imagery and animation on a slow or metered connection. Access is not only a question of assistive technology — a system unusable on a poor connection excludes people by a different route, and that exclusion tracks income and geography rather than disability.
What has not been done is equally specific. No testing with people who use assistive technology daily, across a range of technologies, on real tasks. That is the test that matters and the one whose absence makes everything above a statement of intent. It is not offered here as a plan; it is named as a gap.
So the remediation commitment is what a coordinator should weigh instead, and it is stated as a mechanism rather than as goodwill: a reported defect is acknowledged within a stated period, triaged by severity in terms of whether a task can be completed at all, and a defect that blocks a task is treated as an outage rather than as a backlog item. That commitment goes in the agreement, because a supplier’s enthusiasm about accessibility is not a mechanism and everybody in this field has watched one evaporate after signature.
Whether we are a candidate at all — measured by a written statement that no conformance report exists, before any evaluation effort.
Whether real tasks can be completed with a keyboard alone — measured by your own tester completing the tasks that matter, using no pointer.
Whether structure is real or styled — measured by navigating by headings, landmarks and tables with a screen reader rather than reading the page.
Whether any state relies on colour alone — measured by reviewing each status indicator for a second, non-colour carrier of the same information.
What a defect costs in time — measured by the acknowledgement and severity commitments written into the agreement as timeframes.
Whether a blocking defect is treated as urgent — measured by the severity rule that classifies an uncompletable task as an outage rather than a backlog item.
no independent accessibility audit, no conformance report, no VPAT or equivalent document, and no claim of conformance to any accessibility standard at any level. No testing has been performed with people who use assistive technology daily, which is the test that would make the design statements above into results. A procurement requiring a conformance report is closed and we will say so during market research.
Your own assistive technology, your own versions and your own configuration are what the system has to work with, and a supplier who tests against one combination has tested very little. Testing with your actual estate before signature is worth more than any document either of us could exchange.
Where colleagues use the system through your identity provider, the sign-in path belongs to you and is part of the same journey. An accessible system behind an inaccessible sign-in excludes exactly the same people, and it is a boundary worth checking because each side assumes the other tested it.
And where content is produced by your own teams inside the system, the accessibility of that content is theirs. What can be done at our end is to make it possible rather than to guarantee it — structure available, alternatives promptable, and no interface that quietly encourages a heading to be faked with bold text.
A self-assessment could be produced this week. It would be thorough, it would be written by people reading criteria carefully, and it would very likely say the product supports most of them — and a coordinator would have no way to distinguish it from every other document that did not survive a screen reader. Producing one would help this page and would not help the reader.
What can be honestly offered instead is the invitation to be tested by your own users on real tasks, before any commitment, and to have the findings written down whether or not anybody buys anything. A supplier willing to be tested before a contract is a different proposition from one promising to remediate after it.
On the design statements above, each is checkable in an hour by somebody who knows what to look for, which is deliberate. They are stated as designed rather than as conformant, and a coordinator should treat them as claims to be verified rather than as findings.
No accessibility certification, audit or conformance report is held or claimed. A SOC 2 Type II attestation is in progress and no report exists yet; it concerns security and availability rather than accessibility and is mentioned only so it is not mistaken for one.
Ask for access and give it to your own testers with their own assistive technology, on the tasks your colleagues actually perform. Not a demonstration and not a guided walkthrough — the tasks, unaccompanied. An hour of that is worth more than any document, and it is offered before a contract precisely because it is the honest sequence.
Record findings against tasks rather than against criteria. A criterion failure is an argument; a colleague unable to complete their work is a fact, and it is the one that produces a fix.
Put the acknowledgement and severity commitments in the agreement as timeframes. Enthusiasm about accessibility is not a mechanism, and every coordinator has watched one evaporate the quarter after signature.
And where your procurement requires a conformance report, stop here. We do not have one, we will not produce a self-assessment dressed as one, and continuing costs your team effort for an outcome that is already determined.
Access for your own accessibility testers to attempt the real tasks your colleagues perform, using their own assistive technology, with findings recorded whether or not anybody proceeds.
This is offered before a commitment because after one it means much less. A supplier who invites testing while you can still walk away is making a different statement from one who promises remediation once you cannot.
Record findings against tasks rather than against criteria, and share them regardless of the outcome. If the result is that this is not usable by your colleagues, that is the correct finding and it belongs in your file rather than being softened.
Where the tasks can be completed, the remediation commitments are what the rest of the relationship rests on, and they belong in the agreement rather than in a conversation.
No. There is no independent accessibility audit and no conformance report to hand over, and no self-assessment will be produced in place of one. That closes any procurement requiring the document, and you should hear it here rather than after your team has spent weeks on an evaluation. It is worth saying that a self-assessment could be written this week and would probably look reassuring — which is exactly why it would not help you, because you would have no way to distinguish it from every other one that did not survive a screen reader.
A set of design decisions you can verify in about an hour rather than take on trust: every interactive control reachable and operable from a keyboard in reading order, structure carried by real headings, lists, tables and landmarks rather than by styling, no state conveyed by colour alone, focus visible and deliberately managed, and text that scales without stranding content. Each is stated as designed rather than as conformant. Give the list to your tester and have them check it — that is what it is for.
It does not, and that gap is named here as a gap rather than dressed as a plan. Nobody who uses assistive technology daily has tested this on real tasks, and until they have, everything above is a statement about intent. What is offered is that your own testers do it, with their own technology, on your real tasks, before any contract exists — and that the findings are written down whether or not you proceed. A supplier willing to be tested while you can still walk away is making a different offer from one promising remediation after you cannot.
That is the normal outcome, which is why the commitment here is a mechanism in the agreement rather than an assurance in a meeting. A reported defect is acknowledged within a stated period, and a defect that prevents a task being completed at all is classified as an outage rather than as a backlog item — which puts it in a queue that has a clock rather than a priority discussion. Ask for both as contractual timeframes. Enthusiasm is not a mechanism and every coordinator has watched one evaporate the quarter after signature.
Because exclusion has more than one route and the other one is rarely anybody’s job. A system that is unusable on a slow or metered connection excludes people along lines of income and geography rather than disability, and it excludes them just as completely. The whole surface has a mode that reduces imagery and animation under those conditions. It is not a substitute for the assistive technology work and it is a real property that most products do not have, so it belongs where somebody responsible for access will actually see it.