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From ACR Claims to Campus Accountability: Managing Digital Accessibility Risk

Scheduled at 11:45 in Colorado F on Wednesday, November 18.

#43257

Speaker(s)

  • Mark Turner, President, Optimal Solutions Group

Session Details

  • Length of Session: 1-hr
  • Format: Lecture
  • Expertise Level: All Levels
  • Type of session: General Conference

Summary

This session explains how higher education teams can evaluate ACRs, identify risks in vendor accessibility claims, and connect procurement review to campus accountability. Participants will learn practical approaches for assessing evidence, spotting red flags, strengthening contract expectations, and managing digital accessibility risk across platforms, websites, documents, and other digital content.

Abstract

Higher education institutions increasingly rely on vendor-provided platforms, learning technologies, websites, mobile apps, documents, and digital services to deliver academic programs, student services, and administrative operations. Vendors often submit Accessibility Conformance Reports (ACRs), but these reports vary widely in completeness, testing transparency, product specificity, and usefulness for decision-making.

This session will demonstrate how vendor ACRs can be assessed and triaged to determine which products appear lower risk, which require clarification, and which warrant more in-depth accessibility analysis, independent validation, remediation planning, or ongoing monitoring. Using the ACR Evaluator (ACE) as the primary case example, the lecture will show how structured review can help identify common risk indicators, including vague “supports” claims, missing testing details, outdated or mismatched reports, unclear evaluator qualifications, incomplete responses, and unsupported vendor assertions.

The session will then connect ACR triage to changes in campus procurement policy and practice. Topics will include how institutions can strengthen RFP language, require current and product-specific ACRs, define accessibility evaluation criteria, include accessibility in source selection scoring, require vendor clarification and remediation plans, preserve rights to independent testing, and build accessibility requirements into contract terms, acceptance criteria, renewal decisions, and post-award oversight.

Participants will leave with a practical framework for moving from collecting ACRs as documentation to using them as evidence for risk-based procurement decisions, vendor accountability, and continuous management of digital accessibility risk.

Keypoints

  1. ACRs are vendor claims that require structured review, not proof of compliance.
  2. Risk-based ACR triage identifies products needing clarification or deeper review.
  3. Procurement policies must embed accessibility into evaluation, contracts, and oversight.

Disability Areas

All Areas

Topic Areas

Artificial Intelligence, Campus & System-wide initiatives, Legal, Procurement, Uncategorized

Speaker Bio(s)

Mark Turner

Dr. Mark Turner is President and CEO of Optimal Solutions Group and Co-Founder and Chief Product Designer of Revelo Software, where he leads the design of digital accessibility, compliance, analytics, and SaaS solutions for government, higher education, and enterprise clients. His work focuses on helping organizations move beyond one-time accessibility reviews toward scalable, evidence-based accessibility management.

Dr. Turner is the designer of the Accessibility Conformance Report Evaluator (ACE), a Revelo Software tool that supports the review and interpretation of accessibility conformance documentation, including VPATs and Accessibility Conformance Reports. ACE helps organizations strengthen procurement, compliance, and vendor accountability by turning accessibility documentation into more actionable evidence for decision-making.

He also designed ACE Content Assurance, which supports organizations in evaluating and improving the accessibility and quality of digital content across websites, documents, and other public-facing resources. Together, ACE, ACE Content Assurance, and Revelo’s broader accessibility ecosystem reflect Dr. Turner’s practical approach to digital accessibility: combining automated testing, content assurance, analytics, remediation support, and compliance evidence so institutions can identify risk, prioritize action, and demonstrate measurable progress. This experience makes him especially well suited to address the practical digital accessibility challenges facing higher education institutions.