How to Buy Accessibility Remediation Services: A Procurement Checklist

You have an audit, a backlog of inaccessible PDFs, or an obligation with a date attached. Now someone has to buy the fix, and the market is crowded with vendors who all say they do the same thing.

They do not. The difference shows up after you sign: in documents that still fail a screen reader, in reports that cannot be checked, and in invoices that grow because the scope was never pinned down. This checklist is meant to prevent that.

What are you actually buying?

Start by naming the deliverable. “Accessibility” is not one thing. Be specific about which of these you need:

• An assessment or audit, which finds problems but does not fix them.
• Remediation, which fixes them: page templates, documents, media.
• Testing and verification, often by someone independent of whoever did the fixing.
• Training or advisory work, so your own staff stop creating new problems.
• Conformance documentation, such as a VPAT / Accessibility Conformance Report. What is a VPAT? explains the document.

Buying remediation when what you needed was triage wastes money. Triaging a legacy PDF backlog is worth doing before you request quotes.

Which standard should the contract name?

Name it, by version and level. Which one depends on who you are: federal and vendor-to-federal work is governed by Section 508 through 36 CFR Part 1194 and FAR Subpart 39.2, while state and local government are working toward the WCAG version in the Department of Justice rule. Section 508 vs ADA vs WCAG sorts out which applies. For the dates that apply to you, see the deadlines post.

If you buy remediation to a standard lower than the one you are bound by, you have paid for work you will do again.

What should you ask a vendor to show you?

How they test. Automated scanners find only a portion of issues, and a vendor who relies on them alone is selling you a scan. You want manual review and testing with real assistive technology. Automated scan vs. manual audit explains the gap.

Which assistive technology they use, and whether they test in more than one screen reader.

A sample of their output. Ask for a remediated document similar to yours and have somebody check it. For a PDF, the contents of a properly remediated file are tags, reading order, roles, language and alt text, not just a passing checker result.

Who does the work. Is it staff, contractors, or an offshore subcontractor? Who reviews it before it ships?

How they handle your languages. If you serve residents in more than one language, ask whether the same vendor can remediate and translate, or whether you will be managing two vendors and a hand-off between them. Translated documents that are untagged fail twice, as covered in Title VI and the ADA in one procurement.

References from comparable work, and whether you can check them.

What are the red flags?

• A promise of “100% compliance” or an automatic fix. No vendor can promise a legal outcome, and overlay tools that claim to repair a site automatically do not change the underlying markup. Be sceptical of any guarantee that is about your compliance rather than the vendor’s own work.
• A price with no scope behind it. If the quote does not say what counts as a page, a document, a template or a revision, the number means nothing.
• A “certification” badge presented as proof. Ask what was actually tested, by whom, and when.
• No retest. Remediation without verification is a claim.
• Reluctance to give you the working files. You should own the tagged source and the evidence.

How should you write the scope?

Define the unit of work in terms you can count and check.

• Documents: pages, complexity (forms, tables, charts, scanned images needing OCR), and format.
• Web: which templates, which key user journeys, which components.
• Media: minutes of video and audio, and whether captions, transcripts or audio description are needed. Accessible video covers the difference.
• Languages, if applicable.

Ask vendors to price from a sample batch you supply, so quotes are comparable. Writing accessibility into an RFP or SOW provides wording you can adapt.

What belongs in the contract?

• The standard and version to be met, and the definition of done: what test, by whom, using which tools.
• Deliverables: the remediated files, plus a record of what was tested and what was found. What an agency reviewer looks for is a useful template for the evidence.
• A correction clause: defects reported within an agreed period are fixed at the vendor’s expense.
• Revision rules: what happens when your source documents change after remediation.
• Ownership and confidentiality, especially for documents with personal data.
• A limit on what the vendor warrants. Be realistic about this: a vendor can stand behind the quality of its own work, but cannot guarantee a particular audit, complaint or legal outcome, and a contract that pretends otherwise should make you cautious rather than comfortable.

A buyer’s checklist

1. Name the deliverable: assess, remediate, verify, train, document.
2. Name the standard, version and level.
3. Supply a sample batch and get comparable quotes.
4. Ask how it is tested and by whom, and look at sample output.
5. Check how your languages are handled.
6. Define “done” and the retest before signing.
7. Keep the evidence and the working files.

Where Taika fits

We remediate documents and web content, translate in the same workflow, and keep a record of what was checked. We meet and exceed ISO 17100, 9001 and 27001 standards. If we are not the right fit for part of your scope, we will say so.

Comparing vendors? Send us your sample documents or pages, the standard you are working to, the languages you need and any deadline, then request a quote. Our accessibility and compliance services page lays out what we scope and how.