Most people think VPATs are too complex to fill out, but that’s not the case – they’re actually fairly straightforward. Here we’ll show you exactly what you need to know to complete the Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) and create an Accessibility Conformance Report (ACR).
Step 1: Discard the Instructions
The first part of a VPAT is merely instructions for filling out the VPAT. You will remove these instructions for the final ACR.
Step 2: Fill in the Details Section
The first part of the VPAT consists of all of the details involved. Here’s what your finalized ACR must include besides the accessibility information:
- Report Title – Use the heading format of “[Company Name] Accessibility Conformance Report”
- VPAT Heading Information – Template version
- Name of Product/Version – Name of Product being reported, including product version identifier if necessary
- Report Date –Date of report publication
- Product Description – A brief description of the product
- Contact Information –Contact Information
- Notes – Any details or further explanation about the product or the report. This section may be left blank.
- Evaluation Methods Used – Include a thorough breakdown of the evaluation methods used to find accessibility issues.
- Applicable Standards/Guidelines – Which standards the report covers.
At the end of the VPAT, there is one more section, a Legal Disclaimer (Company). This doesn’t need to be filled in, but your organization can elect to add a disclaimer if they so choose.
Step 3: Complete The Accessibility Table
The material portion of the ACR is the accessibility table. Here’s where we actually get into the main show: the accessibility of the product or service.
This section isn’t an audit report (though you’ll need to audit the digital asset to complete the table), but think of it as more like a standardized format that shows the distilled audit results.
For every criterion that the given VPAT edition covers (WCAG 2.x, Section 508, EN 301 549, and INT), the following two columns will be filled out:
- The conformance level
- Remarks and explanations
Conformance Level
There are multiple options you can put here:
- Supports: The functionality of the product has at least one method that meets the criterion without known defects or meets with equivalent facilitation.
- Partially Supports: Some functionality of the product does not meet the criterion.
- Does Not Support:The majority of product functionality does not meet the criterion.
- Not Applicable:The criterion is not relevant to the product.
- Not Evaluated: The product has not been evaluated against the criterion. This can only be used in WCAG Level AAA criteria.
Note: When filling in the WCAG tables, a response may use ‘Supports’ where one might otherwise be inclined to use ‘Not Applicable’. This means that if there is no content to which a success criterion applies, the success criterion is satisfied.
Remarks and Explanations
This column doesn’t necessarily have to be filled out, but information is required if the product either partially supports or does not support the guideline. If the product supports a particular guideline, then remarks are encouraged, but not required.
It’s a red flag if this column is completely empty so even if your digital asset is perfectly conformant, it’s still good to add supporting information.
Summary
Filling in a VPAT and creating an ACR is quite simple. The hard work is conducting the audit and then there’s also some work in carrying those results over to the VPAT format.
If you need help with an audit or you’d like us to complete a VPAT and issue you an ACR, we’re happy to help.
Just send us a message and we usually have ACRs to our clients within 1-2 weeks. We even have rush order options.
