Auto remediation of document accessibility issues

*Amendment 001 is raised to address Intellectual Property (IP) - See attachment

This Challenge Notice is issued under the Innovative Solutions Canada Program (ISC) Call for Proposals 003 (EN578-20ISC3). For general ISC information, Bidders can visit the ISC website.

Please refer to the Solicitation Documents which contain the process for submitting a proposal.

Steps to apply:

Step 1: read this challenge

Step 2: read the Call for Proposals

Step 3: propose your solution here

Challenge title: Auto remediation of document accessibility issues

Challenge sponsor: Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC)

Funding Mechanism: Contract

MAXIMUM CONTRACT VALUE:

Multiple contracts could result from this Challenge.

Phase 1:

• The maximum funding available for any Phase 1 contract resulting from this Challenge is : $150,000.00 CAD excluding applicable taxes, shipping, travel and living expenses, as required.
• The maximum duration for any Phase 1 contract resulting from this Challenge is up to 6 months (excluding submission of the final report).
• Estimated number of Phase 1 contracts: 3

Phase 2:

Note: Only eligible businesses that have successfully completed Phase 1 will be invited to submit a proposal for Phase 2.

• The maximum funding available for any Phase 2 contract resulting from this Challenge is : $1,000,000.00 CAD excluding applicable taxes, shipping, travel and living expenses, as required.
• The maximum duration for any Phase 2 contract resulting from this Challenge is up to 12 months (excluding submission of the final report).
• Estimated number of Phase 2 contracts: 1

This disclosure is made in good faith and does not commit Canada to award any contract for the total approximate funding. Final decisions on the number of Phase 1 and Phase 2 awards will be made by Canada on the basis of factors such as evaluation results, departmental priorities and availability of funds. Canada reserves the right to make partial awards and to negotiate project scope changes.

Note: Selected companies are eligible to receive one contract per phase per challenge.

Travel

No travel is anticipated in Phase 1. Project meetings will be conducted via video conferencing.

Kick-off meeting

All communication will take place by telephone, videoconference, and Teams.

Progress review meeting(s)

Any progress review meetings will be conducted by videoconference or teleconference. 

Final review meeting

All other communication will take place by telephone, videoconference and Microsoft Teams

Challenge Statement Summary

Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) is seeking an automated tool to aid in identifying, addressing, and complying with accessibility issues within common document types.

Challenge Statement

The Treasury Board Secretariat (TBS) Accessibility Strategy for the Public Service of Canada's vision is to become the most accessible and inclusive globally. ESDC’s goal is to be a leader in public service accessibility. 

To support this vision, the department continues its efforts to make ESDC content compliant with accessibility standards and ensuring that employees have necessary training and tools to build accessibility in from the start (e.g. accessibility checkers, templates, assessment reports, coaching sessions). Despite this raised awareness and information sharing, creating accessible documents remains a challenge. Authors of documents leverage different document accessibility checkers to identify issues, and then manually address these issues one-by-one, making it very time consuming. Unfortunately, time and resource constraints could sometimes hinder or halt the process.

ESDC would like to be a model of accessibility by proposing an automated accessibility solution.

There are tools to identify accessibility issues, such as font type, size and color, but it is still a manual process to edit each document. 

Desired outcomes and considerations

Essential (mandatory) Outcomes

The solution must:

1. Be automated;

2. Be able to scan documents for accessibility issues;

3. Allow for the automated remediation of accessibility issues;

4. Be accessible by design for usage by persons with disabilities meeting the current Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) standards;

5. Identify at a minimum 25% or more of WCAG accessibility issues and highlight them in common document formats (such as .doc, .pdf, .ppt, images, etc.); and

6. Correct and/or suggest and prompt for corrections to accessibility issues in common document formats (such as .doc, .pdf, .ppt, images, etc.).

Additional Outcomes

The solution should:

1. Identify at least 50% of WCAG accessibility issues and highlight them in common document formats;

2. Compliment ESDC’s accessibility strategy by proving a teaching aid to users (e.g. guiding the user on "what is the issue" and "how can I fix it");

3. Identify and highlight accessibility issues in images; and

4. Provide a score or rating for each document (for example: Good, Fair, Requires attention / 100% - 0%).

Background and Context

Currently, in order to respect the accessibility requirements, an ESDC employee goes through each document manually. This is a time consuming process that is often not completed due to constraints on resources. 

An automated process to find accessibility issues within many different formats (e.g. word, pdf, PowerPoint, excel, video, images) would aid in aligning with the Treasury Board Secretariat's Accessibility Strategy for the Public Service of Canada. This initiative could assist to achieve this goal by increasing accuracy and efficiency in which the documents are updated.

Accessibility by design refers to incorporating the need for accessibility into the initial stages of the development and having it as a first principle when designing the system. In this case, it would mean the developer would have to list this in the initial work plan and describe how it will be incorporated.

https://www.tbs-sct.canada.ca/pol/doc-eng.aspx?id=23601

https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/

ENQUIRIES

All enquiries must be submitted in writing to TPSGC.SIC-ISC.PWGSC@tpsgc-pwgsc.gc.ca no later than ten calendar days before the Challenge Notice closing date. Enquiries received after that time may not be answered.

How to Prepare a Bid