I believe I will have strip-mined this topic completely by the end of this posting.
Who were the “principals” at the bidding firms, and what, if anything, of interest did the bids say? Keep in mind that most of these companies acted like total greenhorns and lobbied to exempt the majority of their bids’ pages from disclosure, which I did not appeal. They got what they deserved, after all: They lost. But, really rather quite annoyingly, this means I don’t know the names of the so-called accessibility experts for every bid. In particular, I don’t know who went shopping in Ottawa. Presumably somebody.
Website Experts
- Steve Barabash, director
- Elizabeth Petzhold, senior design coordinator
Infinite Media
- Brad Sellors, president
- Mark Bastin, GM
The Active Network
Patty Labadie, account executive.
Fourth Wall
Ian Gadsby, partner.
Mindblossom
- Daren Trousdell, MD
- Sherry McCrae, senior manager, strategy and media
- Jane Shkolnik
Submitted on tabloid-sized pages. Part of Ægis Media, a public company, as of November 2007.
Cyberplex
This one’s always good for a laugh. David Benoliel (title unclear).
- Proposes SharePoint Portal Server 2007: “Leveraged powerful out of the box features provided by Share Point – The new mantra for system is design is configure VS build.”
- Onscreen colour adjustment? Sure – “in the form of alternate
.aspxmaster pages and CSS (style sheet) definitions.” - Self-voicing pages? Again, sure – using Simply Web 2000.
- Accesskeys? Must use Accessibility Kit for SharePoint.
- Search-engine optimization? The examples given are
GalaxiWorld.com(a casino) and unnamed E-cards. Yes, E-cards.
EnvisionIT
Peter Carson, president. They blacked out their professional references in the table of contents, but their org chart shows the same thing on another page. Will use Accessibility Kit for SharePoint. Yes, SharePoint.
Seven days for creation of CSS and layout; access-kit integration and development, three days; accessibility audit, one day; QA testing, four days, then two. Includes SharePoint Services Web Content Management Student Guide (sic).
Intrafinity
- Ryan Wagman, proposal development manager
- John Carbrey, senior solution analyst
Bad Math
These are the people who grew on me. Adam Putter, director; mentions Janis Mussat as other owner. Clients: Partners’, ClearChannel, Canadian Cancer Society. They have their own CMS, Typo3 (perverse official orthography: “TYPO3”).
Accessibility experts? Why, the CNIB, of course: Mike Park, Senior Accessibility Expert; Lesley MacDonald, coordinator of accessible design services. Mike Park states they’d “use Bobby to thoroughly test the code and make sure it complies to WCAG; Website would be tested with Screen Reader and Magnifiers; Website would be tested by a network of blind and disabled users using the software mentioned above.” (The only software mentioned is, you’ll recall, Bobby.)
For the umpteenth time, let me explain that CNIB knows next to nothing about Web accessibility and, in their ravenous campaign to secure every public-sector client they possibly can, they’re nothing short of dangerous. (Guess who’s doing the so-called independent accessibility evaluation of the TTC beta site?)
For text-to-speech, they’ll use ReadSpeaker.
Radiant Core
Jason “Jay to his friends” Goldman. Who’s their accessibility expert? Me – it’s right there on p. 6. Yeah, so now you know.
CMS? Alfresco.
Says it’s “unnecessary” to provide onscreen font and colour adjustment (quoting me). Accesskeys conflict with screen readers. Plugs the Transport for London accessibility page. Rejects text-to-speech, as “we do not believe that there exists a reasonable or cost-effective tool… any visitors who need a screen reader will already be running one when they arrive on the website.”
Devlin
Agata Ostrowska, manager, operations. Solely owned by Catharine Devlin. I believe it is otherwise well known who actually worked on the TTC site: Joanna Briggs.
Bell
- Joke (which I assume is Nigerian and is pronounced with two syllables) Folami, account manager
- Jonathan Barry, VP, sales
Appears to actually be Bell ICT Solutions.
Imex Systems
Shamir Furtado, director. Remember, I did paid work for Shamir many years ago.
Tiny Planet
Stephen van Egmond.
eSolutions
Karen Mayfield, MD. Part of Conestoga-Rovers & Associates.
Brandworks
- Lorne Kirstenraum, director
- Jim Sproul, director, business development
Advoca
The Krusty the Klown of this bidding process, Advoca’s full bid consisted of four printed pages, in a graphic-design layout, composed entirely of Lorem Ipsum placeholder text.