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Buy Accessible - Welcome to Buy Accessible Email

I am writing to welcome you as a ‘registered vendor’. I’d like to take a few moments and provide some insight into how you can make your participation most effective in providing quality data to government buyers.

1) I strongly advise you to evaluate your products features and complete the voluntary product accessibility template that was developed by the IT Industry Council. Review the accessibility standards developed by the Access Board, determine which are relevant for your product, and provide the description (on the template) of how your product addresses each of the relevant requirements. The more detail you provide at this level will facilitate the market research that government buyers are required to perform pursuant to section 508. See the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) to learn more about the government buyer’s.

NOTE: All information provided and obtained via Buy Accessible is based upon vendor self-representations. Buy Accessible does not warrant the accuracy of the information. Unless expressly affirmed by the vendors in your procurement, information provided via Buy Accessible is not contractually binding. This information is provided to facilitate market research on the accessibility of products.

2) Once you have completed the template for your product, register that product with Buy Accessible. When assigning your product to a group, refer once again to the accessibility standards or the template. We have conveniently emulated the groups or classes of covered products as given in the accessibility standard. The more accurate your representation, the easier it will be for a government buyer to find your product while searching the database!

Care for a few hints on how to use Buy Accessible to increase sales? Care for some leads on marketing to the federal government? If so, read on!

Some vendors have chosen to provide a link to their website instead of a link to their product template. Something to ponder: “How much effort is someone going to expend to dig into your site to find product accessibility information, when they can click once on another search result and immediately access the information (in the form of the template) that they need to make a decision?” I strongly suggest that you provide a link to the template for each product. You can provide a link to general information when you register your company.

If you are a vendor currently under a contract with a government agency, let them know that you have product accessibility information available through Buy Accessible. This will enable them to better serve their customers (hopefully their customers will become your customers) by providing the additional data. In fact, agencies that manage government wide acquisition contracts (GWACs), are required to indicate to their customers if they have product accessibility information. See the requirements.

Are you interested in bidding on federal government contracts? Visit the single point of entry for all government acquisitions at: http://www.fedbizopps.gov/.

One question we frequently are asked is “How do I get on the GSA Schedule or become a GSA vendor?” The answer to that question and many more questions regarding GSA, can be found at: http://apps.fss.gsa.gov/schedules/do_Biz.cfm.

So, I welcome you to Buy Accessible and wish you success!

Feel free to provide feedback or contact me with questions via email.

Katherine A. Rhodes
Project Manager

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