VPAT: the accessibility document procurement asks for

A VPAT — Voluntary Product Accessibility Template — is the form used to document how a product measures up against accessibility standards. The completed document is properly called an Accessibility Conformance Report, and although people use VPAT for both, the distinction matters when a buyer asks for one: the template is empty, the report is the thing they want.

It exists because public-sector and increasingly private-sector procurement asks for evidence of accessibility, and a supplier needs something to hand over. What it is not is a certification. Nobody issues it, nobody approves it, and a VPAT saying a product fully supports everything is a claim its author made — which is exactly how experienced procurement officers read it.

Which VPAT edition, and what the ratings mean

• The template comes in editions: WCAG, Section 508 for United States federal procurement, EN 301 549 for Europe, and an international edition covering all three. Ask the buyer which they need before starting.
• Each criterion gets a conformance level: Supports, Partially Supports, Does Not Support, or Not Applicable.
• Every rating other than Supports needs remarks explaining what the gap is and where it occurs.
• The report states the product version and the date, because a report against a version from two years ago describes software nobody is buying.
• The evaluation methods used — automated tooling, manual testing, assistive technology testing — belong in the report, and their absence tells the reader what to think.

Honest beats flattering

The temptation is to rate everything Supports and hope nobody checks. Buyers do check, increasingly with their own testing, and a report contradicted by five minutes with a screen reader damages more than an honest one with gaps would have. A report that says Partially Supports with a specific remark and a remediation date is a stronger commercial document, because it tells a procurement officer that the supplier knows their product — and it is the one that survives being forwarded to an accessibility specialist.

A VPAT is a snapshot of a version. Regenerate it when the product changes materially, and put the version and date at the top where the reader sees them first. An undated report is treated as out of date, correctly.

What producing one actually involves

Automated tooling finds a fraction of the issues — commonly cited as around a third — and cannot judge whether a heading structure makes sense or whether a custom control is operable. Producing a defensible report means manual keyboard testing, testing with at least one screen reader, and someone who can read the success criteria and apply them to your interface. Where the stakes justify it, an external accessibility audit produces the underlying findings and the report is written from them; where they do not, an honest internal assessment with stated methods is far better than nothing.

Keeping it current

The report is a document with versions, an owner and a review trigger, and it lives next to the remediation backlog it describes. Ettex Docs holds the report with version history so the edition sent to each buyer is recoverable, Ettex Board tracks the gaps to closure so the next revision is a re-rating rather than a rewrite, and Ettex Records keeps the audit findings and the test evidence alongside it — the same file a security questionnaire draws on.

To be clear: this is documents and records, not an accessibility testing tool, and none of it is legal advice. Which standard applies to you depends on your buyers and your jurisdiction, and the conformance claims are yours to make and defend.