The Accessible Digital Commons
Aligning Government Procurement to Sustain Open Source
- Date
Monday, 28 September 2026 · 10:40–11:00 CEST
- Location
Goudriaan Room I&II · DrupalCon Rotterdam 2026 Government Summit
- Speakers
Mike Gifford · CivicActions
What could result from more intentional public procurement?
- Government capability
- Accessible public services
- A more inclusive society
- Open source can multiply that public value.
What does procurement usually pay for?
- A single implementation
- Project-specific customization
- Fixes that only benefit that project
- Ongoing support for that deployment
- Who pays to improve Drupal itself?
Accessibility exposes the repeat-work problem
Project by project
- Find an accessibility problem.
- Fix the page or site.
- Close the ticket.
- Repeat.
Shared infrastructure
- Find the source of the problem.
- Fix the reusable component.
- Contribute the improvement.
- Others can benefit.
Accessibility does not stop at the public website
- Authors need help creating accessible content for their users.
- They also need accessible authoring tools.
- Procurement has to cover both.
The Netherlands gives us a model
Open Source Ambitieladder
- Publish the code — make it inspectable
- Develop increasingly in the open — show your work
- Enable collaboration and contribution
The U.S. has procurement machinery we can learn from
- Define accessibility requirements before solicitation
- Require suppliers to explain how accessibility will be tested
- Validate vendor accessibility claims
- Make accessibility part of deliverable acceptance
- Re-test when products change
Put accessibility into the contract
- RequirementsDefine applicable standards, users, journeys and authoring workflows.
- TestingDefine how, when and by whom accessibility will be tested.
- PeopleInclude disabled people in research and testing.
- AcceptanceMake accessibility part of deliverable acceptance.
- MaintenanceRe-test after significant changes and upgrades.
- Upstream contributionRequire a path for vendors to contribute generally useful accessibility fixes back to shared open-source projects.
Say what you mean
One public problem. One reusable improvement.
- Find the barrier.
- Fix the system producing it.
- Share the improvement.
- Continue maintaining it.
Fix it once. Fix it upstream.
What will you change in your next procurement?
- Website
- ox.ca/
- Slides
- ox.ca/p/11