Questioning the Consultant's References

The following questions may help you during the consultant selection process when checking references supplied by consultants who respond to your RFP. You will no doubt have your own set of questions that you would ask of any reference, but when it comes to accessibility, you may be asking about topic areas with which you have had little past experience. The following questions should provide you with a good foundation on which you can explore the consultant’s performance with other clients.

Question: Are you happy with the difference seen in your product/service after using the consultant?

Reason for question: This is a basic question that addresses whether consultant-driven changes were successful. If the consultant was able to convince the product development team that certain changes were useful or valuable, and then those changes had a positive impact on the organization and their products, then that is a good measure of the skills of the consultant.

Question: If the consultant made any Return-On-Investment (ROI) predictions, did they turn out to be true?

Reason for question: ROI is a tricky area in this field, and predictions are, therefore, difficult to make. Direct correlations between the numbers of people with disabilities in the population and the increased number of people who will buy a product or use a website can often be incorrect. The fact that people with disabilities are often among the poorest segments of the population means that, more often than not, they do not have the funds to buy electronic products or access the web. Another issue related to low use by people with disabilities is that word-of-mouth sales may be low.

ROI predictions may be made in terms of your organization's ability to beat its competition by gaining an edge in winning government or other contracts. In either case, questioning whether the consultant’s predictions were anywhere near the actual results can highlight the consultant's awareness of market issues.

Question: Did the consultant make design suggestions that were impractical based on the mass-market needs of your product?

Reason for question: Did you start off with a sleek and stylish design and then the consultant tried to convince you to make it accessible in a clunky or awkward way? When designing mass-market products and websites, the general (attractive) look and feel of the product should remain. If not, then the consultant is making suggestions that meet the legislation but which could decrease sales and general customer satisfaction. The question to the reference is whether the suggestions were practical given the needs of customers who do not have functional limitations.

Question: Have you had any feedback from end users (people with disabilities) on your products/services since the work was done?

Reason for question: There may not be a flood of people with disabilities who rush out to buy or use a product or service in the early stages of its availability, but it should be expected that there will be some feedback from customers with disabilities, or from representatives of disability organizations. This feedback, positive or negative, may also be a useful indicator of how well the consultant performed.

Next Step

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