Title II Compliance What are VPAT and ACR's?

Understanding the Acronyms

Created by the Information Technology Industry Council (ITIC), the Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) is a document that explains how a product conforms to accessibility standards such as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

Once the VPAT is completed, it is sometimes referred to as an Accessibility Conformance Report (ACR).

A VPAT has 2 parts, a Product Information Page and the Success Criteria Table. Extensive knowledge of accessibility standards is not needed for a quick assessment of product compliance.

Product Information Page

This section can give you a sense of the quality of the vendor’s approach to accessibility.

What to look for:

Report Title – In the heading format of “[Company Name] Accessibility Conformance Report”
VPAT Heading Information – Template version. The current version of the VPAT template is 2.4, which replaced version 2.3 in February, 2020.
Name of Product/Version – Name of Product being reported, including product version identifier if necessary. Make sure the VPAT you’re evaluating is for the correct product.
Report Date – Date of report publication. If the VPAT is more than a year old, it’s likely out of date.
Contact Information – Contact Information for follow-up questions. Ideally this is the person that performed the assessment, like a third party expert or in-house accessibility SME.
Evaluation Methods Used – A detailed description of evaluation methods used to complete the VPAT for the product. Specificity and robustness are good signs here. “Tested with a screen reader” doesn’t tell us much. “Tested the X user workflow using NVDA screen reader, keyboard and Siteimprove” is much better.
Applicable Standards/Guidelines – NWACC adheres to WCAG 2.1 AA. VPATs that are still listing WCAG 2.0 or Section 508 as a standard are likely out of date.

Success Criteria Table

This section documents product compliance with WCAG criteria.

What to look for:

In Column 1 each row lists a WCAG Success Criteria
In Column 2 the vendor indicates the conformance level. Note: if the vendor is marking most rows as “Supports” or “Not applicable,” it could be an indication the VPAT needs reviewed for accuracy.
In Column 3 the vendor to includes notes specific to that criterion and their compliance to it. Ideally each cell in this column is populated. An empty Column 3 should be considered a red flag.

VPAT Collection

You can assist by asking sales reps for them when evaluating new digital resources or by incuding links to them when submitting new digital resources for Accessibility Review.

The DL will request VPATS from vendors for any new digital resources submitted for Accessiblility review without one. The DL will pass them on to the IT department for retention if the reviewed resource is adopted.

The IT department will collect them as part of the procurement process.