Lakeside Fire Protection District digital content and related services have to be fully accessible to all. We are subscribers to AAAtraq to assist us with supplier management, staff training, litigation insurance and compliance monitoring & reporting.
Key to our compliance commitment is ensuring our digital service partners understand and deliver to the accessibility standards. The basis of our purchase and your supply of services is set out in this document.
Purpose
We are focused on the delivery of the best possible, fully compliant online experience for all our visitors.
Our commitment, we would hope is also shared by our supply partners. Working in partnership we can all ensure that those who access to our online content can regardless of accessibility needs enjoy their online experience and transact with us online.
The purpose of our supplier policy is to set out why accessibility is important to us, our expectations of suppliers – to summarize the standards we are looking to them for and confirm reporting requirements.
Expectations
We expect you, and your staff to appreciate and understand the importance of and the detail of online accessibility.
We expect you and your teams to share our commitment deliver to the WCAG accessibility standards as laid down by the W3C.
Your ability to understand, adhere to and deliver against the standards is key – any and all services, software, system or content asset meeting at a minimum the checkpoints across WCAG 2.1 Level A and Level AA.
The expectation is that this is considered to be covering any; all (in their singular or plural) elements, assets, service supplied or software (including related services) product procured for use online (public facing or other wise).
Our expectation is for you to be able to show documented process, not limited to staff training, service management pre and ongoing compliance testing.
Standards
The ADA Act (Title III) prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability in the activities in places of public accommodations. Online this means ensuring we can demonstrate reasonable adjustment and that we have our own process around staff training, reporting and monitoring.
We must all work to the common standard defined by the W3C, as the WCAG ver. 2.1. The specific, and individual check points as detailed in Levels A and AA. Adherence to Level AA requirements does not in any way demonstrate adherence to Level A requirements. Each level has a separate set of requirements.
ADA – https://www.ada.gov/ada_title_III.htm
W3C, WCAG 2.1 – https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG21
Part 36 Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Disability in Public Accommodations and Commercial Facilities
https://www.ada.gov/regs2010/titleIII_2010/titleIII_2010_regulations.htm
Reporting
For supplied services we require you to record compliance against accessibility standards, summarise your audit process and evidence adherence to the relevant areas of testing process.
Where your process involves the use of external systems, services or tools, you are to retain the specific results.
We reserve the right to complete our own external auditing, at a supplier of our choice. If this audit finds defects which render the product or service you have supplied to us unfit for purpose, we will expect you to remedy this at your cost.
On a quarterly basis (FEB | MAY | AUG | NOV) a summary of supplied services should be available, the specific details to be provided: Service Supplied, Date of Supply, Accessibly Standard Achievement, Evidenced by and Notes.