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Accessibility Software – Making Documents Accessible

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Need: Accessibility regulations came into force for public sector bodies in the UK on 23 September 2018. This has placed a requirement on councils to make website, apps and the content of websites accessible, based on WCAG 2.1.At least 1 in 5 people in the UK have a long-term illness, impairment or disability. Many more have a temporary disability. Many of which use assistive technology, such as screen readers, in order to access websites, documents and PDFs.Wrexham Council has created a new website, which has fewer documents, but none-the-less documents are still being created and published on the site. We have created guidelines, and tutorials on how to create accessible documents but staff are struggling to follow these and are therefore not creating accessible documents. We have used the Check Accessibility feature built into Microsoft, but that does not pick up on the most basic standards such as document title, and heading structuresWrexham Council is looking for a software solution which will help staff to create documents, check and fix and accessibility issues within standard Microsoft Office applications such as Word and PowerPoint.Requirements of solution-ICT need to be able to deploy the software from SCCM-Software needs to be intuitive and easy to use, making accessibility easier-Must help create documents that meet WCAG 2.1 accessibility standards, making sure document titles and heading structures are correctly used-Must work with Office 2016 (current standard), and Office 365 (future standard)-Support and training for staff should be also be made available-Need to have a 3 year contract covering the office based staff.Please email your response with an overview of your solution to Rachel Glynn, Category Manager by 12 noon on the 15th Julyrachel.glynn@wrexham.gov.uk