Ellen Perlow wrote:
> Re Dr. Axel Schmetzke's accessibility survey for vendors:
> 1.  We must not assume that our understanding of what accessibility means is
> what other people understand the term to mean. It isn't.

        I can't second this statement strongly enough, even outside of the defining the
term.  I was involved with the Illinois State Library's "request for proposal"
process for its statewide "Find-It! Illinois" service, and we evaluated three
vendor responses.  We had specifically asked them whether their software was
accessible in what we thought was a pretty straightforward way.  Two of the
companies noted in writing that their products were accessible.
        I wanted clarification of what this meant, so in a follow-up I asked which
priority level of the W3C guidelines they met.  The first company said they had
misunderstood the question, didn't know what the W3C guidelines were, and they
would look into it and get back to us.  The second company was much more
knowledgable, stating that they met priority one, most of priority two, and were
working on becoming fully compliant.  Their answers made a big difference at how
we evaluated this aspect of their RFP response but without the specific
clarification, they would have been listed as accessible.

Jenny
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Jenny Levine                            125 Tower Drive
Internet Development Specialist         Burr Ridge, IL 60521
Suburban Library System                 +1 (630) 734 5141
http://www.sls.lib.il.us/               [log in to unmask]
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