What is a VPAT?
The Voluntary Product Accessibility Template is a document outlining how well your product complies with accessibility regulations.
It contains information about any existing accessibility issues and how well you conform with each requirement in standards like the WCAG.
This document allows buyers to assess how well your product will work for users with disabilities, so that they can decide if they want to, or even are allowed to purchase and use your product in their daily operations.
You can create this document yourself. However it usually requires an accessibility audit be done to find any accessibility issues first. That can be difficult and time consuming for a non specialist to do.
Why use a VPAT?
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was recently clarified to enforce state and local governments in the US provide accessible websites and apps to their citizens. This includes such software provided via 3rd party vendors.
You can read more about what this means for vendors but basically:
- IF you sell to state or local governments in the US
- And IF your product or service includes a website or app
- THEN the website or app has to comply with accessibility guidelines (WCAG 2.1 AA) for governments to be allowed to buy it
- The VPAT document is the formal way to show them how your product conforms to such guidelines
How do I get one?
In order to put together a VPAT you need to know all accessibility issues your product or service has. Preferably you’ll want to fix any major issues before publishing a VPAT which contains the remaining issues and workarounds for them.
- Contract a specialist to audit your website or app and compile a list of issues
- Work on solving the major issues (Axess Lab reports are prioritized and contain suggested solutions in design and code)
- Check for any remaining issues (for reference, acceptance tests are 30% of the original audit price at Axess Lab)
- Create a VPAT using the report of remaining issues, or have someone like Axess Lab do it for you
- Publish it on your website or link to it wherever you sell or describe your product, and have it ready to upload as a document in tenders or procurements.
What does it cost?
The big cost is finding the state of accessibility in your product. A VPAT document can be added for ~$1000 (Axess Lab price example) once there is a report to base it on.
You can also create it yourself using templates found online, if you know what you’re doing. Otherwise, feel free to book a free meeting with us and we can guide you through the whole thing: