What is a VPAT?
A VPAT — Voluntary Product Accessibility Template — is a standard document, maintained by the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI), that a vendor uses to describe how accessible a product is. The current version is VPAT 2.5. It is a template: a set of tables, one row per accessibility criterion, with columns for a conformance level and remarks. Filling it in for a specific product turns it into an Accessibility Conformance Report, or ACR. In day-to-day procurement language the two words are used interchangeably — when a buyer asks for "your VPAT," they mean the completed ACR.
The criteria in a VPAT come from published accessibility standards. The WCAG edition uses the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines success criteria (1.1.1 Non-text Content through 4.1.3 Status Messages). The Section 508 edition adds the United States federal requirements: functional performance criteria, hardware, software, and support documentation. A VPAT does not invent its own rules; it is a reporting format laid over existing standards so that buyers can compare products on the same terms.
For each criterion you record one of five conformance levels — Supports, Partially Supports, Does Not Support, Not Applicable, or Not Evaluated — and a remarks field explaining the rating. Honest "Partially Supports" entries with specific remarks are far more credible than a column of unexplained "Supports." A VPAT is a self-assessment, so its value rests entirely on the accuracy of those remarks.
VPAT Studio is the wizard that produces this document: you fill the front matter and rate each criterion, and it exports a correctly-structured ACR as PDF and DOCX, entirely in your browser.
Open the ACR builder — free, no upload
What a completed VPAT contains
- Front matter: product name and version, report date, vendor, contact, evaluation methods and applicable standards.
- Conformance tables grouped by chapter — Level A, Level AA, and (for 508) the functional, hardware, software and documentation chapters.
- A conformance level for every criterion, from Supports to Not Evaluated.
- Remarks explaining each rating, which is the part buyers actually read.
Questions
Is a VPAT legally required?
The template itself is voluntary, as the name says. But U.S. federal agencies must buy ICT that meets Section 508, so vendors selling to government are effectively required to provide a 508-edition ACR. Many private buyers and universities now request one too.
Who fills out the VPAT — the vendor or a third party?
Either. Vendors commonly complete it themselves as a self-assessment, sometimes after an internal or external audit. It is not a certification, so no outside body has to sign it, though some buyers prefer reports backed by independent testing.
How long is a typical VPAT?
The WCAG edition is roughly 50 criteria rows plus front matter. The Section 508 edition adds another 25-30 rows across the functional, hardware, software and documentation chapters.