Please report physical, electronic, or programmatic access barriers. These include any barriers that interfere with equal participation in any University of Montana programs and facilities.
Purchasing/Procurement
All Electronic and Information Technology (EIT) or Information and Communication Technology (ICT) purchased, acquired or used by the University must be accessible.
Entry into the procurement process
- There is an automatic accessiblity review step in GrizMart.
- EIT (software/hardware) evaluation can also be initiated by submitting the EIT Accessibility Evaluation Request form.
- There will be periodic audits of other procurement processes (for example, ProCards).
How you can help
UM Requesters will be asked to provide a VPAT (Voluntary Product Accessibility Template) or initiate communication with the vendor if a VPAT is not easily located.
In addition, you can help ATS speed up the process by answering these questions as your software enters the review process:
Please give a brief description of the software / program.
- Is it administrative or academic?
- Is the license/software you plan to purchase usable by more than one individual? Do you plan to expand use?
- Is it likely to be shared or not (examples: network software, highly specialized dental or medical software, etc.)
- Do you know of any known category issues: Math/Stem, videos, GIS/maps, data visualization, screen sharing, spatial data relevant to an image (teeth, nursing. body, airline seats) or other visual representations.
- Is a product created (video, document, web page) If so, the product needs to be tested also.
Replacement:
- Is this product replacing a product that we’re already using? If yes,
- Name of existing product:
- Status of product accessibility review (i.e. is it approved, given conditional use or denied)
- If this is a renewal, has the current installation been upgraded since we last reviewed it? If not, is there an upgrade that has’t yet been installed?
What you can expect
- Both standard hardware and software utilized by one or two people is usually passed quickly through the process.
- EIT submitted for review with a VPAT is usually processed within 5-7 business days unless vendors or EIT testing requires additional time.
- EIT submitted without a VPAT is processed as quickly as possible although there may be delays related to obtaining sufficient information for review.
Standards Details
EIT accessibility is currently defined by two standards – Section 508 for most categories and Section 508 plus WCAG 2.0 AA for websites and programs. The software industry has standardized on VPAT (Voluntary Product Accessibility Templates) forms which allows a vender to list their product's accessibility according to each section of relevant 508 standards. VPATs are obtained from and filled out by the software vendors.