The surging demand for VPATs/ACRs in the marketplace is real which leads some product and service owners to wonder if they can create their own Accessibility Conformance Report (ACR).
The answer is yes, you can. But there’s a catch.
The catch is that many procurement agents and buyers who are asking for ACRs are going to ask you who issued your ACR and if you say it was created internally, they’re going to view it with an astericks. In fact, some buyers will only consider independently issued ACRs.
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VPAT vs. ACR
Before we go any further, let’s first make sure we’re on the same page about what VPAT and ACR mean. A Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) is just a template. When the details and accessibility portion of the VPAT are filled in, it creates an Accessibility Conformance Report (ACR).
Most people say VPAT when they mean ACR so just know that the two terms are commonly used interchangeably in the marketplace.
Why You Shouldn’t Create Your Own ACR
Now, as for creating your own ACR, we recommend against it for a number of reasons:
- As mentioned, self-issued ACRs hold little weight in the marketplace due to the potential for bias and inaccuracy. This defeats the purpose of creating your own ACR.
- There’s an obvious conflict of interest in someone from your digital team grading their own product or service for accessibility.
- There’s a tendency to overlook or check off accessibility issues that are scheduled to be addressed at a later date.
- Not disclosing that your internal team produced the ACR can be viewed as deceptive and/or unethical in many circumstances since the ACR document is being requested to get an accurate accounting of your product or service’s accessibility.
- An audit from a technical accessibility expert needs to be conducted before a VPAT can be filled out. Your digital team likely doesn’t have a qualified expert to conduct this audit.
ACR Timeline
But, maybe you’re under a tight deadline that requires you produce an ACR in less than 10 days – should you go ahead and issue your own ACR since something is better than nothing?
Maybe, maybe not.
The plus side is at least you’ll have an ACR to provide when requested and that’s not nothing.
But, again, when the buyer compares ACR’s they’re likely going to inquire about who issued the ACR. And the information provided may also invite questioning.
The key if you create your own is just to do so ethically and make sure that you have someone who has technical expertise in accessibility evaluate your product or service.
Let us know if we can help. We’re really fast with audits and ACRs. We can usually provide a 1-2 week turnaround time on ACRs. We also offer rush service.
ACR Cost
It’s not inconceivable that you receive a quote for $10,000 for VPAT services from some digital accessibility companies. This may lead some product and service providers to think they’re priced out of an ACR.
However, our prices are very competitive. We only charge $550 for our VPAT/ACR service (for the WCAG edition of the VPAT) plus the cost of your audit (most of our audits range between $2,500 to $7,500).
And we return both the audit and the ACR as a deliverable so that you not only have the ACR but also information you can leverage to make the appropriate fixes.
Use an Independent Third-Party Service
So while you can fill in your own VPAT, it’s more practical to source out the service to an independent third-party accessibility company such as us, Accessible.org.
We can even work with your team to time the work so that your team can work on remediation before we issue the ACR.
We’re currently helping a client with just this. Here’s the process and order for this client:
- Accessible.org audit
- Client remediation
- Accessible.org technical support
- Accessible.org re-audit
- Accessible.org issues ACR
By taking this approach, we maximize value for our clients so that they’re able to reduce or eliminate accessibility issues from their ACR.
If you need help VPAT services, we invite you to contact us and we’ll reply back ASAP.
