We encourage you to test out new educational technologies and are happy to help with integrations to those third-parties. However, we cannot guarantee that all third-party products will meet the privacy, data and accessibility requirements Ontario universities are required to uphold for our students. Typically investigating new integrations can take a short time, as little as a few hours, to many months. This is dependent on the integration’s requirements and whether the data that they are requesting is something that McMaster considers private information.

What can you do to speed up this process?

• Ask for the administrator’s documentation to integrate with D2L’s Brightspace (which is what we call Avenue to Learn).
• Ask “how does your product satisfy AODA standards?”
• Ask “do you have a VPAT statement?”
• Ask “is this an LTI integration?”
• Ask for evidence (peer-reviewed studies, not conducted by the company themselves) that this product helps learning

You can pass on contact information, VPAT statement and administrator documentation to us through a support ticket, and we will begin our investigation. We will then look at the viability of the integration from our perspective, and then proceed to have the vendor fill out UTS’s Third Party Vendor Questionnaire. After the questionnaire is filled out, any items that do not meet our standards will be raised with the vendor, and we will see if changes to the product will address concerns. In most cases, vendors are happy to work with us, and they provide a quick solution to the roadblock. In other cases, the integration will not be able to proceed until the issue is addressed.

While we ask for a VPAT statement, which is a voluntary product accessibility template which complies with the US Section 508 Standard, it does not necessarily mean the product is accessible. We do not have the capacity to assess third-party products for accessibility concerns. For more information about VPAT please visit: https://accessibleweb.com/tips-tools-tutorials/what-is-a-vpat/

There are reasons that we may choose not to integrate with a third-party. We will communicate these with you and the vendor directly. Usually these involve the passing of privileged information, but could include many other reasons. Feel free to reach out to us at any time for clarification.