Crown Commercial Service (CCS)
Accessibility audit
11 Incomplete applications
10 SME, 1 large
13 Completed applications
11 SME, 2 large
Important dates
- Published
- Monday 7 January 2019
- Deadline for asking questions
- Monday 14 January 2019 at 11:59pm GMT
- Closing date for applications
- Monday 21 January 2019 at 11:59pm GMT
Overview
- Summary of the work
-
Review external/internal systems/content for compliance against WCAG 2.1 (Level AA).
Provide a report on which CCS services and content currently meet the standards and a high-level gap analysis of those which do not, including an assessment of where corrections would constitute a “disproportionate burden”. - Latest start date
- Monday 1 April 2019
- Expected contract length
- Up to 3 months
- Location
- No specific location, eg they can work remotely
- Organisation the work is for
- Crown Commercial Service (CCS)
- Budget range
- £20-£40k
About the work
- Why the work is being done
- To understand how compliant our legacy systems are with WCAG 2.1 (AA) regulations so we can plan the work required to meet the compliance deadlines
- Problem to be solved
-
Review of external (and internal) systems to get an understanding of the work involved to make CCS’s systems accessible to all.
Assess a representative sample of pages/content from each CCS system/service and report on those which currently meet the standards and a high-level gap analysis of those which do not
This will include an assessment of where corrections would constitute a “disproportionate burden”. - Who the users are and what they need to do
- Two main types of users: internal (staff) accessing CCS systems; external users (buyers/suppliers) accessing systems provided by CCS to buy/supply common goods and services to the public sector. All users need to be able to access our systems, irrespective of their abilities.
- Early market engagement
- Any work that’s already been done
- Systems currently being developed are being built in accordance with accessibility regulations. No work has yet been done to assess the work required on our legacy systems.
- Existing team
- The User Research Coordinator will manage access to systems for the third party, and deal with day-to-day issues. The Head of User Research & Design will provide escalation, and the SRO is the Chief Digital and Technology Officer. No further internal resources are anticipated to be needed.
- Current phase
- Discovery
Work setup
- Address where the work will take place
- No physical location as systems can be accessed remotely. If required, space could be made available in the CCS London office (151 Buckingham Palace Road).
- Working arrangements
- To be agreed between CCS and the successful supplier.
- Security clearance
-
Not anticipating this being co-location, so no security clearance is required for access - Access to our offices will be as visitors.
Staff may require BPSS for general access to CCS services, this may be increased should a higher level of access (e.g. SysAdmin) be required.
Additional information
- Additional terms and conditions
Skills and experience
Buyers will use the essential and nice-to-have skills and experience to help them evaluate suppliers’ technical competence.
- Essential skills and experience
-
- Demonstrate your deep and thorough understanding of WCAG guidelines (4%)
- Evidence&experience over 2+ years of testing WITH people with a range of disabilities, including: Blindness, Low Vision, Colour Blindness, Dyslexia, Limited Limb mobility, Learning Disabilities, Autistic Spectrum Disorder. (4%)
- Evidence and experience over a period of 2 or more years of WCAG Accreditation (4%)
- Evidence and experience over a period of 2 or more years of carrying out WCAG assessments (detail your experience) (4%)
- Evidence and experience over a period of 2 or more years of providing designers and developers with accessibility advice (4%)
- Evidence and experience over a period of 2 or more years of assessing pages for usability through assistive technology and software (4%)
- Nice-to-have skills and experience
-
- Evidence and experience over a 2 year period or more of testing services on all/any combination of Mobile Phones, Desktops, Laptops and Smart TV’s. Include detailed examples (2%)
- Demonstrate your understanding of the technical impacts and implementation requirements which may result from any suggested/required changes. (2%)
How suppliers will be evaluated
- How many suppliers to evaluate
- 5
- Proposal criteria
-
- Define how you will deliver the work to ensure CCS can meet its statutory accessibility requirements within the deadlines (Sept 20 for Legacy systems) (5%)
- List what technology you will test on (5%)
- Detail who will conduct the testing and the different disabilities that will be represented (5%)
- Detail the specific outputs you will produce and their value to CCS in meeting our obligations (5%) - Please also provide a sample report (Not Scored)
- Detail a high level timeline for the delivery of the works (5%)
- Detail the team structure, including the roles, their experience levels and qualifications (5%)
- List the risks, issues, dependencies and assumptions associated with this work and how you will manage them (5%)
- Detail how you will manage this work and ensure CCS are informed and appraised of progress and issues as they arise (4%)
- Detail how you will deliver best value in the completion of this work (3%)
- Cultural fit criteria
-
- Detail how you work with other people including CCS staff, senior stakeholders and testing participants (1%)
- Explain how you solve problems and how you will communicate issues to CCS (1%)
- Detail your approach to making decisions and assessing what would constitute a ‘disproportionate burden’ to CCS (1%)
- Describe how you share knowledge and experience both within your organisation and with CCS (1%)
- Explain your attitude to making mistakes (1%)
- Payment approach
- Fixed price
- Assessment methods
- Written proposal
- Evaluation weighting
-
Technical competence
70%Cultural fit
5%Price
25%
Questions asked by suppliers
- 1. Is using people with the list of disabilities essential or would you consider awarding this contract to an organization of professional quality engineers who specialise in WCAG 2.1 evalutions?
-
The systems should be tested with real people with various disabilities.
It is up to suppliers to undertake this work themselves or to subcontract it. - 2. Is there an incumbent supplier for accessibility audits at CCS? If so, who is this?
- There is no incumbent supplier for this work
- 3. Can examples of core user journeys be provided for each system?
- These will be provided to the successful supplier once works commence
- 4. For testing with a people with a range of disabilities, does this need to be real users or can this be professional testers with disabilities?
- Professional testers are fine, as long as they're real people with the disability.
- 5. Will the CCS be able to supply relevant data or usage statistics to assist with the identification of changes that would constitute a 'disproportionate burden’?
- Yes, we can support with that for situations when it's not clear from the context.
- 6. Please can you confirm the number of pages to be evaluated on both the internal and citizen facing websites?
- This will vary from service to service, however we anticipate that there will be 10-15 per system which will include the main page templates in each.
- 7. What, if any, content management system do you currently use?
- Wordpress is our current CMS
- 8. Can you provide more information on the size of project scope and technologies used by CCS? What are the legacy systems that require testing? Or at least: How many web applications? How many websites? How many desktop apps? How many mobile apps? Etc.
- Of the systems to be audited, 9 are web-based applications and one is a content site based on Wordpress.
- 9. Are there any 3rd-party hosted Web pages on either the internal or citizen facing websites? If yes, will they be in scope for this accessibility audit?
- The majority of the in scope services are hosted by 3rd parties.
- 10. Proposal Criteria: “List the technologies you will test on” – are there particular (mobile / other) devices the CCS are seeking to be in scope?
- As a minimum, we would expect you to test on: desktop/laptop, tablet and smartphone. The full suite of commonly used operating systems should also be included.
- 11. How many individual legacy systems require review?
- At this moment in time, a total of ten systems are required to be audited.
- 12. If shortlisted, will we have access to your systems to do a preliminary audit?
- No, we will not be able to grant access to shortlisted suppliers. Access to systems will be made available to the successful supplier once a Contract and NDA are in place.