Hi Marije
A great initiative – the time you best catch the attention of suppliers in relation to accessibility is when you're about to part with money!
if it's the former then one of the critical things to consider is the experience they have in creating accessible documents .
Sample questions might include
· which digital formats are created as part of your printing workflow? (EPUB3 is great if you can get it, HTML / EPUB2 next best, PDF - the most likely output - is okay if they know how to make it accessible)
· are your PDFs accessible and if so what do you mean by that - please tell us what you do to ensure accessibility?
· Which assistive technologies have your outputs been tested with?
There may well be other questions but in the time available that all I can come up with! It's important not to be over-swayed by people who spout standards at you because they can be a smokescreen… the spouter of standards usually knows that you don’t really know how to check what they are saying. It's not that the standards are unimportant. It's more that well applied standards should provide demonstrable end user benefits. Always insist on the demonstration - get them to show you how their PDFs can magnify and reflow. Get them to demonstrate text to speech working on them. Get them to demonstrate how well they've coped with describing images.
A
From: Discussion list for disabled students and their support staff.
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Marije Davidson
Sent: 02 April 2014 12:08
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Tendering for printing services
Dear all,
We are renewing our printing contract this year and we want to build equality and diversity considerations into supplier selection. I would be very grateful for suggestions for, or examples of, supplier questions. These can be general questions (about policies, for example) but we are in particular looking for functional questions (e.g. accessibility for disabled users; ability to use different name forms).
If you reply to me at [log in to unmask] by Tuesday 8 April then I will collate the responses and share them.
PS I’m hoping that by sending this email out to JISCMail groups simultaneously people who are subscribed to more than one list will get this email only once but if not – my apologies for cross-postings!
Kind regards,
Marije Davidson
Equality and Diversity Adviser
York St John University, Lord Mayor’s Walk, York YO31 7EX
T: 01904 406457 (please dial full number)
E: [log in to unmask] W: www.yorksj.ac.uk
@ysjequality
This email and any files transmitted with it were intended solely for the addressee. If you have received this email in error please let the sender know by return.
Please think before you print.