VPAT
Definition
The template is maintained by the Information Technology Industry Council, a US trade association, and is now in its 2.x series. It comes in four editions: one for WCAG alone, one for the Revised Section 508 standards that apply to US federal procurement, one for EN 301 549 in Europe, and an INT edition that covers all three in a single document. You work through the criteria one by one and assign each a conformance level from a fixed set — Supports, Partially Supports, Does Not Support, or Not Applicable — with a remarks column explaining the reasoning. The result is self-reported. Nobody certifies a VPAT, there is no registry, and the document is only as good as the testing behind it. This page is general information, not legal advice.
Why It Matters
Procurement is where this bites. US federal agencies, state bodies, universities and a growing number of large private buyers will not start a purchase without a current report, and an out-of-date one stalls the deal as surely as a missing one. An honest report reads better than an optimistic one: a row marked Partially Supports with a plain note and a target release earns more trust than a column of Supports that falls apart in the buyer's own testing, and overstating conformance in a document a customer relies on is a commercial risk as well as an accessibility one. Because every row has to be answered, filling one in also exposes exactly which parts of the product nobody has tested — which is why it usually follows an accessibility audit rather than replacing one.
How It Works
Pick the edition that matches the buyer, since a US federal agency wants Revised Section 508 and a European public body wants EN 301 549. Test against each criterion the edition lists, at level A and AA, using the same mix of automated and manual methods an audit would use. Fill in the conformance column and write remarks that describe behaviour rather than intention — which component fails, what a user encounters, and whether a workaround exists. Record the product name and version, the date, the evaluation methods and the assistive technology combinations tested, because a report with no version or date tells a buyer nothing. Publish it as a plain document people can actually read: a tagged, accessible PDF or an HTML page, since a conformance report that a screen reader cannot get into is an awkward look.
Real-World Example
A three-person software company is asked for a conformance report by a university buyer. They test their web app against the WCAG edition at level AA, mark two criteria Partially Supports with notes about a date picker, and export the finished report as a tagged PDF hosted at accessibility.99helpers.site. Because the file lives at a stable address, the sales team links to it from every proposal, and each quarterly update replaces the file in place so the link in old emails still resolves to the current version.
Common Mistakes
- ✕Marking everything Supports to get through procurement — the buyer tests, finds the gap, and now has a written claim that was wrong rather than a known limitation
- ✕Publishing a report with no product version, no date and no description of how testing was done — the buyer cannot tell whether it describes the release they are about to purchase
- ✕Choosing the wrong edition for the customer — a WCAG-only report leaves a European public body without the EN 301 549 clauses they are obliged to ask about
Related Terms
EN 301 549
EN 301 549 is the European standard setting accessibility requirements for ICT products and services, and it is what public-sector procurement across the EU points at. For web content it adopts WCAG wholesale rather than inventing its own rules.
ADA Compliance
ADA compliance refers to meeting the Americans with Disabilities Act as it has been applied to websites and digital services. The statute names no web standard, so the picture is built from regulation and case law rather than from a single document.
WCAG
WCAG, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, is the W3C standard that defines what accessible web content is. Its success criteria at Levels A, AA and AAA are what accessibility law and procurement point to.
Accessibility Audit
An accessibility audit is a structured review of a site or document against a named standard, producing a list of failures mapped to specific success criteria. It combines automated scanning with manual testing, because tools alone catch only part of the picture.
Document Hosting
Publishing office documents — .docx, .xlsx, .pptx, .csv, .rtf — at web addresses. No browser can draw these formats, so a correct response ends in a clean download with the right file name.
Put a file online in seconds
Drop in a document, an image, a page or a whole static website and share the link — free, with no build step and no server to set up.
Host a file free →