Accessibility in procurements

In order to facilitate the design, production and administration of accessible services, publications and online content, procurement documents must define the accessibility objectives and requirements. Accessibility-related requirements may be set for a service to be procured and/or for the service provider.

Accessibility can either be defined as a separate item or included in the requirements on usability, ease-of-use and operational reliability.
Accessibility-related requirements may be set for the offerer or service provider (references, competence), persons responsible for providing the service (experience, expertise) and/or the service to be procured.

All services procured must be accessible. Helsinki aims to achieve level AA or higher, as defined in the WCAG 2.1. guidelines, in terms of the accessibility of its digital services.

The procurement documents must always define the acquisition-specific accessibility requirements, the purpose of which is to ensure the accessibility of a new service (perceptibility, controllability, understandability and operational reliability).

Offerers or service providers must be required to comply with the requirements defined in the City’s accessibility guide when designing, creating, acquiring and maintaining online content and publications.

Offerers or service providers must be required to demonstrate the accessibility of the procured digital services.

For example, the client must consider whether the procurement in question requires specifying how accessibility will be checked.

Automatic accessibility checking tools alone are usually not enough for accessibility assurance, but they can be used to support manual testing. Only a human check will cover aspects such as the logicality and cognitive accessibility of a page (understandability – accessibility of information).