Providing Accommodations for Meetings

To request an accommodation for meetings, contact your manager to initiate the process as soon as the need arises. The School Accessibility Services Team can provide guidance on workplace accommodations and meetings, or the School Assessments Procurement Team can provide guidance on client/contract-based requests for accommodations. The procurement and scheduling of these services can be time-consuming, so allow as much lead time as possible.

Pearson Budget/Statement of Work (SOW) Process

If a Service Provider (Vendor) Statement of Work (SOW) is not already in place, plan adequate time to complete this process. Overall, the process could take 2–4 months. Once a Vendor has been identified, the onboarding, contract execution, and Purchase Order (PO) process can begin. The Coupa onboarding portion can take up to 1.5 months and must be complete before the SOW can be approved and executed. Do not schedule work with the Vendor until the SOW is executed and a Purchase Order (PO) is in place.

To facilitate accommodation requests, complete the following checklist to ensure you follow all Pearson requirements.

  • Budget/Costing
    • Talk to your manager about the need to secure interpreting or captioning accommodation to ensure that your department’s budget includes adequate funding. For assistance in estimating the cost of each service, contact the School Accessibility Services Team.
  • Vendor Selection
    • If an interpretation accommodation is needed within 4 weeks, it is imperative that you select a Vendor already active in Coupa. If the Vendor is not active, it likely will take longer than the time available to add them and contract with them for their services.
  • Statement of Work and Purchase Order
    • When you have secured the budget and selected the Vendor(s), you must execute an SOW and PO before the Vendor can begin work.
    • Do your best to provide an accessible SOW and PO to the vendor. For general knowledge of making the SOW and PO accessible, please refer to our Accessible Document Support Center.
    • If multiple meetings are planned throughout the year, create the SOW to reflect that.
    • Review the fully executed SOW and PO for accessibility before sending them to the Pearson manager and the Vendor.
    • IMPORTANT – To protect proprietary and/or confidential information, aside from the contracting documents with the vendor, each interpreter/captioner must have a signed NDA in place prior to providing services.

Preferred Vendors

Pearson has several preferred vendors available. The following vendors already are in the Coupa system. Vendors that are not currently in Coupa must be onboarded.

  • U.S.-Based Deaf & Hard-of-Hearing Interpreting Vendors: The following Vendor provides interpreting services that are used within the U.S. such as American Sign Language (ASL), Pidgin Signed English, Signing Exact English, oral interpreting, oral interpreting with sign support, etc.

    Communication by Hand, LLC (Vendor ID: 223660-USPE)

    Note: If the event is Pearson School Assessment program-based and the Pearson School Assessment program develops sign language videos, you should use a different interpretation Vendor for meetings than the one being used for the sign language videos.

  • U.S.-Based Captioning Vendors: The following Vendor provides captioning services for English-language events globally.

    CaptionSource, LLC (Vendor ID: 225690-USPE)

    NOTE: For U.S.-based signed language and real-time captioning accommodations (e.g., American Sign Language [ASL], and Communication Access Realtime Translation [CART], contact Corey Fauble at corey.fauble@pearson.com.

  • U.K.-Based Deaf & Hard-of-Hearing Interpreting Vendors: The following vendor provides interpreting services within the U.K. such as British Sign Language (BSL).

    Positive Signs (Vendor ID: 197603-GPE)

    NOTE: For assistance with U.K.-based sign language accommodations (e.g., BSL, contact Karar Saeed at karar.saeed@pearson.com).

Securing the Vendors for Meetings/Events

Provide Key Information: When securing accommodations for a webinar, meeting, or in person event, it is important to provide the Vendor with the following key information as it is related to the event and needs:

  • Nature of Meeting/Appointment: Let the vendor know if this is a meeting, presentation, webinar, interview, training, etc.
  • Date/Time: Provide the Date and Time of the meeting; be sure to call out the time zone.
  • Services for: Provide the name of the individual that the meeting accommodation is for.
  • Remote or Onsite Location: Forward the meeting invitation or let the vendor know it is to be provided at a later date. For an onsite meeting, provide the address of the location their services are to be provided.
  • Presentation to be provided: (Specify Yes or No) If there is a presentation planned for the meeting, the presentation must be provided ahead of the meeting so the interpreter can become familiar with spellings, jargon, and other terminology.
  • Name and Number of onsite point-of-contact: Provide the vendor with the Name & Number of the Meeting Coordinator.
  • NOTE to Vendor – Provide the name and email address of the interpreter to the point-of-contact listed above.
  • Purchase Order Number: COU3XXXXXXXXXXX

Avoid Late Booking and Cancellation Fees: To prevent being charged for late booking and late cancellation fees, understand and follow booking and cancellation requirements from each vendor. This should also be defined in the Vendor SOW.