The document that unblocks the deal — or creates the liability.
A VPAT is a representation about your product. Written honestly against real testing, it moves deals through procurement. Written optimistically to get past a checkbox, it becomes something a buyer can hold you to later. We produce the first kind.
Accessibility has become a procurement gate, not a feature request.
Government agencies, universities, health systems, and large enterprises increasingly require a VPAT — the Voluntary Product Accessibility Template — and the Accessibility Conformance Report it produces before a contract is signed. With public entities now bound to WCAG 2.1 AA under the ADA Title II rule, that requirement is spreading to buyers who never asked before.
Sales teams usually meet this at the worst possible moment: late in the cycle, with a deadline, and no one internally who owns the answer.
Signs you need this
- A buyer asked for a VPAT or ACR and nobody owns producing one
- Your existing VPAT is years old, or was written without testing
- Deals stall in accessibility review after security clears
- You're entering public sector, education, or healthcare markets
How we produce a report that holds up.
Scope
Define the product version and the editions the report covers — WCAG, Section 508, EN 301 549, or the combined INT edition your buyers expect.
Test
Real evaluation against every applicable criterion: automated, manual, and assistive technology across the workflows a buyer will actually use.
Report
Supports / Partially Supports / Does Not Support with specific, honest remarks per criterion — the remarks column is what experienced buyers read.
Roadmap
Every gap assigned an owner and a target release, so the report tells a credible improvement story rather than an aspirational one.
Sustain
Accessibility testing in the release process and a refresh cadence, so the report stays true instead of aging into a misstatement.
Reading a VPAT critically.
If you're on the buying side, a VPAT is evidence to evaluate, not a certificate to file. Most weak reports share the same tells: every row marked "Supports," an empty remarks column, no product version, no test date, no methodology, or a report clearly authored by sales rather than engineering.
We help procurement and IT teams evaluate vendor accessibility claims, write requirements and acceptance criteria into RFPs and contracts, and verify before renewal — because under ADA Title II, the services you deliver through a vendor's platform are still yours to answer for.
What to require in an RFP
- A named standard: WCAG 2.1 (or 2.2) Level AA
- A current VPAT with product version and test date
- Testing methodology, including assistive technology used
- A dated roadmap for any partial or failing criteria
- The right to test independently before acceptance
- Remedy terms if conformance claims prove inaccurate
Where this connects.
SaaS in procurement review
The full use case: what happens when accessibility becomes a deal blocker, and how the engagement runs.
Read the use caseWCAG audit
The testing underneath the report. A VPAT without an audit behind it is an opinion.
Learn moreProduct management consulting
Getting accessibility into the roadmap and definition of done, so the next report writes itself.
Learn more