Details about each Release

Release 3

At the end of September, 2006, a new release of the Wizard (version 3.0) was submitted to GSA for certification and accreditation approval (a process more commonly known as C&A). “Security certification and accreditation are important activities that support a risk management process and are an integral part of any agency’s information security program. The process provides a form of quality control and challenges managers and technical staffs at all levels to implement the most effective security controls possible in an information system [NIST Special Publication 800-37].”

Release 3.0 features a GSA-maintained data base to store Wizard information for any registered agency user. In addition, the Wizard will provide solicitation support (a 'solicitation checklist', an updated wizard summary, and a new 'solicitation template'), making it easier to develop specific and appropriate language for solicitations.

Until the C&A process is complete, version 2.2 will remain in operation at www.buyaccessible.gov.

Release 2

Release 2 of the Wizard, in addition to providing all the features of Release 1, provides enhanced support for doing market research to determine the availability of compliant products and services.

Providing support for the market research requirement means Wizard users will need to access information about the accessibility of products and services as provided by manufactures or providers of those products and services (vendors). The most relevant source of this information is the Buy Accessible data base at section508.gov (available at www.buyaccessible.gov) where vendors have had the opportunity to register accessibility information since 2001. The most common vehicle vendors have used for registering accessibility information has been the Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT). Release 2 provides full integration of the Buy Accessible portal with the micropurchase data base (developed in Release 1.5—see below) as the means for providing market research information to Wizard users through the Market Research Data Center.

Release 2.2--September 2006 features

• a robust search capability to find accessibility information that vendors have provided
• an enhanced worksheet to record the results of market research
• ability for users to save Wizard sessions before they are completed, allowing users to resume where they stopped at their convenience

Release 1

Release 1 was the initial release of the Buy Accessible Wizard that was made available through www.buyaccessible.gov.

With regard to the procurement responsibilities required under Section 508, Release 1 supported the applicability responsibility, whether or not Section 508 pertained to the acquisition (relevance), and whether or not a general exception was being claimed for the acquisition.

Anyone representing the federal government, colleges and universities subject to Section 508, state and local governments, and advocacy groups for people with disabilities (domains for .gov, .[state], .mil, .org, and .edu) could register as a user; registration would allow the user to save data generated by using the Wizard in a data base maintained by the Wizard. Anyone not included in this grouping could also use the Wizard but could not use the data base feature.

This release did not need to access any information outside of that embedded in the Wizard itself except to retrieve acquisition data users had saved.

Release 1.5

Release 1.5 is really an “early release” of Release 2 to support the sunset of the micropurchase exception on April 1, 2005.

This release recognizes that people making micropurchases are doing so under circumstances that are different from acquisitions that are not micropurchases, constituting a different “acquisition profile” requiring special support.

Acquisitions differ on several dimensions, including characteristics of the acquisition process, the buyer, the seller/provider, and the E&IT products/services being acquired. A distinct combination of these characteristics defines an acquisition profile. Examples of profiles include Macro-purchases and Micro-purchases, COTS purchases, and Custom E&IT purchases. Different profiles might have different market research information requirements (e.g. granularity and level of detail for reporting).

With Release 1.5 it is GSA’s intent to provide a simplified process for accessing vendor-provided accessibility information for E&IT acquisitions that meet the micropurchase criteria. The simplified approach is consistent with existing procedures to reduce administrative costs, promote efficiency and economy in contracting, and avoid unnecessary burdens for agencies, contractors, and vendors. This process is valid only for aggregate procurements of products meeting the micropurchase criteria.

Release 1.5 takes into consideration that new types of information will be needed to meet the requirements for a simplified approach for micropurchases. Where Release 1 used “provision-level” information (identifying the “provisions” from the Access Board’s EIT Accessibility Standards that are “applicable” to the particular acquisition), Release 1.5 uses “Product-level accessibility assertions” as the basis for market research information. The current content in Buy Accessible consists of Provision-level accessibility assertions (VPAT format) and vendor capability statements. Therefore, it has been necessary to create this new information to support micropurchases.

Creating Product-level accessibility assertion information

Release 1.5 relies on product-level accessibility assertion information that has been created in a new data base (the micropurchase data base) from information currently in Buy Accessible. Both GSA and the vendor community invested significant resources to establish the Buy Accessible portal, and it is important that this investment is protected. Therefore, to initialize the micropurchase data base, the information in Buy Accessible was used to make determinations about product-level accessibility assertion information where possible. Not all information obtained from Buy Accessible was of the same level; in some cases deriving product-level accessibility assertion information was quite possible, while in other cases this information could not be derived at all.

The algorithm that was used to derive the information to initialize the data base was:

Based on existing VPATs, the number of applicable provisions as reported by the vendor as fully supported, partially supported, and not supported were counted.

If (fully supported/applicable) = 1, then fully supported
If (fully supported/applicable) = 1, then partially
If (not supported/applicable) = 1, then not supported

Vendors whose data was used to derive and register this new information in the data base are being notified as to what information was derived, and each vendor is being asked to provide any additions or edits to the initial data.

As we move closer to Release 2 it is our intent to integrate the micropurchase data base and the data already in Buy Accessible into a single Market Research Data Center as the basis for providing all market research information for all acquisition profiles and all federal E&IT purchasers.

Accessing Product-level accessibility assertion information:

Release 1.5 is available as a web-based application through the GSA 508 Server—just as Release 1 has been available to date. Because of policy considerations at GSA regarding the storage of other agency data, there will be no user data storage capability in Release 1.5.

Recognizing that many agencies will want to store their own data, Release 1.5 will be updated by May 2005 to support an intranet implementation upon successful completion of the testing required to ensure appropriate security is associated for any interaction using the portal to the Market Research Data Center.