VPAT is the template; ACR is the document
The Voluntary Product Accessibility Template is an empty form, published by ITI. An Accessibility Conformance Report is what exists after someone has evaluated a product and filled that form in.
So a request for "your VPAT" is a request for a completed ACR. A blank or largely unfilled template returned to a buyer signals that no evaluation happened.
Choosing the edition
VPAT comes in several editions, and using the wrong one creates avoidable friction:
- WCAG edition — web content and applications, against WCAG.
- Section 508 edition — US federal procurement, incorporating the Revised 508 standards.
- EU edition — EN 301 549, for European public-sector buyers.
- International edition — all of the above, for products sold across those markets.
Only the chapters relevant to the product type should be completed. Documents, software, hardware, web content and authoring tools are assessed differently, and completing chapters that do not apply makes the report harder to read, not more thorough.
The conformance levels
Each criterion is recorded as Supports, Partially Supports, Does Not Support, or Not Applicable. The remarks column is where the report earns its credibility.
"Partially Supports" with a remark naming the affected component, the user impact and the intended fix is genuinely useful to a buyer. "Supports" everywhere, with empty remarks, is the pattern experienced procurement reviewers have learnt to distrust — and it is trivially disproved by their own testing.
Evaluation methods belong in the report
A credible ACR states how the conclusions were reached: which assistive technologies and versions, which browsers, whether testing was manual, automated or both, and what was sampled. A report that omits methodology cannot be assessed for reliability.
Automated scanning alone is not an adequate basis. Machine testing reliably covers only a portion of WCAG criteria; the remainder require human judgement about context, meaning and task completion.
Keeping it current
An ACR describes a product version at a moment in time. Ship a redesign and the document quietly stops being true. If you issue ACRs as part of your sales process, plan to re-evaluate them on a release cadence rather than when a buyer next challenges one.
Why honesty performs better
Procurement teams are not usually looking for a perfect score. They are assessing risk: whether the supplier understands their obligations, whether the document can be relied on, and whether known gaps are being addressed on a timeline.
An accurate report with open findings and a remediation plan routinely clears procurement faster than an implausibly clean one, because the buyer does not have to go and verify it themselves.
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