Procurement - a key to better accessibility
If you make the right demands on your suppliers, you have a much higher chance of succeeding with your accessibility work. It may sound obvious, but it is all too often forgotten. This is despite the fact that there are good methods and tools that can help.
The accessibility requirements of the European Procurement Directive were tightened already in 2017. Of course, in order to fulfil the requirements of the Web Accessibility Directive, it is more efficient that what is delivered is accessible immediately, rather than having to remediate the mistakes afterwards.
Nevertheless, we see many procurements that do not make clear (or even any) requirements for accessibility. One of the reasons seems to be a lack of knowledge or awareness among procurers, which may not be so strange as it is a group of professionals that is expected to be experts in a large number of areas at the same time.
All of us who work with accessibility focus far too much on fixing broken things, says Susanna Laurin, Chief Research and Innovation Officer at Funka. This is of course important, but we must make people do the right thing from the start instead, otherwise the number of inaccessible interfaces will increase, no matter how hard we try to address the shortcomings.
That is why we offer training in procuring accessibility, based on the EN-standard. Do reach out if you would like to know more!