Your digital products must comply with the applicable requirements of the Illinois Information Technology Accessibility Act Standards as published at Illinois Department of Human Services: IITAA. Illinois' IITAA accessibility standards exactly match the United States' Section 508 Standards and the World Wide Web Consortium's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 Level AA.

Prior to purchasing or procuring a digital product, Illinois State University faculty and staff can submit a request to have their digital product reviewed by the Web Accessibility Coordinator.

Submit a help ticket to request an accessibility review. To help process your request, copy, paste, and answer the questions below into the help ticket.

Initial Questions

Submit the answers to the following questions when requesting for an accessibility review of a digital product.

1. Name of Product:
2. URL for product’s website:
3. Vendor name:
4. Description of product:
5. Who will use this technology? (students, prospective students, alumni, faculty, staff, and/or public)
6. How many people will see/use this technology?
7. Describe particular features used in this technology? Major tasks required for use?
8. Is this product used primarily on desktop or mobile devices? Or both?
9. Is this technology required or optional?
10. Is there any other product available at university that could be used instead? You can check the software service catalog to determine if there is a similar product already in use on campus. Review the Service Catalog.
11. Is it possible to get access to the product via a test account for both an administrator of the product and what is viewable by the public?
12. If accessibility issues are found, what plans can be made for remediation or accommodation?
13. Does the product have an up-to-date VPAT (post 2018; VPAT version 2.0 or later)

What is a VPAT?

The Accessibility Conformance Report (ACR) based on the ITI VPAT® is the leading global reporting format for assisting buyers and sellers in identifying information and communications technology (ICT) products and services with accessibility features.

To help in the review process, request an Accessibility Compliance report or VPAT from the product’s vendor early. VPAT is an acronym for Voluntary Product Accessibility Template, which is a document that explains how digital products such as software, systems, electronic content, and support documentation meet (conform to) the Revised 508 Standards. This document is used in the review process and, if available, is needed to have on file. You can download a copy of the VPAT. Whether the product has a VPAT or not, a manual review of the product may be needed prior to purchasing or procuring your product.

What is a Manual Review?

If a product has a development, test, or sandbox environment available, the web accessibility coordinator can manually review major tasks to help assess the product’s accessibility prior to purchasing. A manual review includes but is not limited to:

• Checking page structure – headings, lists, tables, forms
• Checking color contrast of text, buttons and links against background images and colors
• Navigating the product using only a keyboard (no mouse),
• Using common assistive technologies like screen readers to navigate the product
• screen magnification – product should be able to magnify to at least 200% without causing major issues with the readability or structure of the interface.
• Alt text for images
• Captioning and transcripts for time-based media (e.g. videos, podcasts, audio content, animations