Accessibility Program Strategy, Governance, and Procurement
Building the program
A durable program has a policy (scope, standard, roles), an owner with authority, a roadmap with prioritized remediation, and metrics. Mature programs shift from reactive complaint-fixing to proactive design: accessibility requirements in the definition of done, in design system components, and in acceptance criteria. Common structures include a central Center of Excellence, distributed accessibility champions, and executive sponsorship that survives staff turnover.
Procurement leverage
Buying is the cheapest moment to get accessibility right. Practice:
- Include accessibility requirements in the RFP and contract.
- Require an ACR (an ACR is a completed VPAT - Voluntary Product Accessibility Template) covering the relevant standard.
- Validate claims with your own testing.
- Negotiate remediation commitments with dates, plus warranty and termination language.
Traps: treating a VPAT as a certification (it is vendor self-report, often incomplete or optimistic); accepting "508 compliant" as a claim without an ACR; ignoring the roadmap section of the ACR, which is where honest vendors disclose gaps; procuring without a testing budget.
Governance and communication
Define a conformance target (usually WCAG 2.1/2.2 AA), publish an accessibility statement with a feedback channel, and route feedback into a tracked backlog. Report progress in business language - risk reduction, market reach, defect trends - not only compliance counts.
Worked example
A team is buying a learning management system. The RFP requires WCAG 2.1 AA, an ACR for each module, a demo of screen reader use, and contract language obligating remediation of critical defects within 90 days. Two vendors return ACRs; the one with an honest "partially supports" table plus a roadmap wins over the one claiming full support that fails during the demo.
Rule of thumb
If accessibility is not in the contract and not in the definition of done, it is not in the product.