Summer 2023 // Canadian Government Executive / 11 ACCESSIBILITY this would be an effective way to support the basic infrastructure for our modern digital life. Digital government depends on open standards, which can be implemented consistently worldwide. 6) Procurement Government procurement should be improving government accessibility. There has not been a great deal of innovation in Europe around accessible procurement. Most European countries have looked at the early leadership from the USA on Section 508 and the Voluntary Product Accessibility Template and decided that this was not a model that was effective for them. European countries are struggling to find better ways to engage with their vendors, but there is no clear leadership. The Netherlands and the W3C have done a lot of innovation with the creation of the WCAG Evaluation Methodology (WCAG-EM). This process and the associated WCAG-EM Tool help website evaluators strategically evaluate the accessibility of websites. Contracts can be set up to evaluate a website when it is launched, and then every year after that. Because the WCAG-EM Tool produces machine-readable reports, it is easy to see a comparison between different departments and over time. The CivicActions team saw an opportunity to modernize procurement by leveraging the open source solutions provided by the WCAG-EM Tool. Working for the USA Government’s General Services Administration (GSA) we built OpenACR to support a transition to a modern machine-readable approach to leverage global best practices. We saw that there was a need to rethink how Accessibility Conformance Reporting was done that allowed agencies to use the data to inform decision-making about a vendor’s accessibility claims. With a machine-readable approach, it will finally be possible to have an enterprise-wide view. There is a lot that can be done to revise the procurement process. In the USA, we have seen PEAT Works and Disability:IN produce some amazing recommendations for best practices. Procurement and contracting officers have a critical role in structuring accessible procurement. Early engagement with vendors and consistent application across government departments is key for effective adoption. Next steps There is a lot to be learned from global government agencies. Accessibility is a serious problem which requires a holistic approach. The EU and the UK have provided a great deal of leadership around accessibility in the last few years. Because this has been developed and implemented in Europe already, it will be easier for adoption to occur in Canada. We do not need to establish a new precedent or reinvent the wheel—we can improve on models that European countries are already using to improve accessibility. By refining and contextualizing these ideas, we can easily transform Canadian digital government so that inclusivity is baked into our government’s websites. Mike Gifford is a Senior Strategist at CivicActions and a thought leader on digital accessibility in the public sector. He is also a W3C Invited Expert and recognized authoring tool accessibility expert. Previously, he was the Founder and President of OpenConcept Consulting Inc., a web development agency specializing in building open source solutions for the open web. OpenConcept was an impact driven company and Certified B Corporation. Like CivicActions, OpenConcept worked extensively with the Drupal CMS. Mike was also part of the Government of Canada’s Open Source Advisory Board. Mike has spearheaded accessibility improvements in Drupal since 2008, and has served as a Drupal Core Accessibility Maintainer in 2012. As a long-term environmentalist, Mike has found ways to integrate his passions for the web and the planet. His most significant contributions have been in the development of the Sustainable Web Manifesto and adding an open source perspective to Tim Frick’s book Designing for Sustainability. Image: www.peatworks.org
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