Tutorial: How to use the Procurement Toolkit
Scenario
You are planning to purchase or procure some electronic or information technology or other service for your organization. As a procurement officer, you are not expected to know whether any of the employees of the organization have disabilities that would prevent them from using any of the items to be purchased. You do know that all technology and services purchased by your organization must either be directly accessible to people with disabilities, or must be capable of being made accessible through the use of some assistive technology.
- What requirements must you add to a contracting document (e.g. a Request for Proposal) to ensure that the purchases will be maximally accessible?
- What questions need to be asked of a vendor or manufacturer to ensure the mainstream products you are buying - through competitive bid or off the shelf - will be useable by employees with disabilities?
The Procurement Toolkit will help you answer these questions.
Please note that this toolkit does not list or recommend specific products or vendors: we simply aim to provide you enough detail to be of use in a requirement document or purchasing decision.
How this section works:
In this view you are presented with an expanding list of mainstream products and services:
- If an item in the list is linked selecting it opens a page that lists more specific sub-categories related to that item.
- If an item is not linked it usually means that a further breakdown would require listing individual brand or model names.
Definition : Beside every item in the list is a Definition link that provides a short description of the item. The definition page often includes information about the barriers the item may present to persons with different disabilities.
Requirements : When an item is specific enough to warrant the assignment of accessibility criteria the Requirements link will appear beside the definition link. Select it to open the page that lists the requirements you need to add to your contracting document to ensure that product or service meets or exceeds accessibility standards.
Prerequisites : In some instances a link called Prerequisites may appear. Choose this link for things to consider before purchasing: prerequisites may list minimum suitable configurations, necessary infrastructure or other issues, but only as they relate to accessibility or accommodation issues.
This next example shows how you can get the access-friendly feature requirements for a product from the Toolkit into your own purchasing document:
- From the main products menu of the Toolkit choose the general category for the product or service that you are purchasing;
- Follow the sub menus until you find the specific item you are looking for; Choose the "Requirements" link to the right of the product;
- Highlight any or all of the requirements clauses on that page. To do this drag your mouse over it (or position the cursor at the beginning of the clauses, hold the SHIFT key down and move your cursor to the end of the clauses)
- Copy the clauses to the Windows clipboard using the mouse (or by pressing CONTROL-C)
- Switch to your RFP document which is open in another window of your computer using your mouse and the taskbar (or by pressing ALT-Tab on the keyboard until the application you want becomes active).
- Paste the requirements clauses from the APT into your RFP document using the mouse (or by pressing CONTOL-V).
Please note that this example illustrates just a few ways you might get and use the information contained in the toolkit's database. If you are more familiar with other techniques, or if these MS- Windows specific instructions don't apply to you, please use what you know will work for you.
