Due to changes to Section 508 federal law in the United States, institutions of higher education will soon be required to obtain a VPAT (Voluntary Product Accessibility Template) from software vendors to prove their product meets accessibility standards, otherwise we will be forced to remove the software from any computers available for student use. We have had Krita installed on the computers in our labs for many years and would like to continue to provide it for student use. Is this something you have available, or would you be able to create one?
I can not tell if we have or can provide this, but I ping @halla, because she should be able to answer your question. You should have a little patience, because @halla sometimes needs a little more time because of the existing amount of work.
Additionally, I ask our administrative team about the category for your topic, because it does not really belong in this category, but I have issues to decide where I should move it.
@raghukamath / @sooz / @Takiro / @tiar: Can you please decide where this topic better fits? I have issues to find one that satisfies me. Site Feedback does not really fit, off-topic talks seems to be the best candidate but seems somewhat meh, Developer Questions is per definition wrong but the “direct channel” to our devs and @halla.
I’ve had enquiries about that before at the foundation email address. But – we’re not a vendor. We don’t sell Krita to you. We’re also a really small Dutch non-profit with basically me as project maintainer and admin gal. It’s simply not feasible for us to fill in the relevant forms unless we have a business relationship. And we’re not set up to actually become a vendor to educational entities.
Thank you for the reply, I truly appreciate that you took the time to answer. You are correct that you are not legally required to provide a VPAT. It is ultimately the responsibility and legal duty of the institution installing the software to ensure accessibility of the programs. Section 508 wording: “applies to all federal agencies when they develop, procure, maintain, or use electronic and information technology.” Since we provide it for use for students at our institution, this wording would apply to us even for free/open source software. Typically, developers would provide a VPAT to demonstrate accessibility of their software. However, I knew that this would be unlikely for the very reasons you mentioned (it is this way for most open source software after all), but it never hurts to ask. That said, we likely will be forced to remove Krita from our computers next year unless we receive guidance from our Accessibility department on whether we can do these assessments ourselves.
Hello