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?

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?