Accessibility Questions to Ask your Third-Party Software and Publisher Vendor
Accessibility of the Materials
- In what ways is your product ADA compliant? How is it not?
- How does your product work for students with accommodations?
- Is the “free” software bundled with the textbook, accessible?
- Are the videos captioned and audio recordings transcribed?
- Can all of the text that is displayed on the screen be read aloud by text-to-speech software?
- How accessible are the E-books?
- Can all interactivity (media players, quizzes, flashcards, etc.) be completed by keyboard alone (no mouse required)?
- Is there any documentation available such as a Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) or White Paper that confirms accessibility or usability testing results?
- Tips for instructors:
Security
- What data is being collected about my students or me?
- How will this data be used?
- How is this data secured?
Usability and Interoperability of the Materials
- Is your multimedia (Adobe) Flash or (Oracle) Java-based? (Another way to put this, is “Can your materials be watched on an iPad?”)
- Does any software need to be installed on student or TCU computers?
- What are the computer requirements for using their materials? Will the materials work on mobile devices?
- How will students get access to the materials?
- Can the electronic content be made available for purchase through the bookstore?