Guide for buyers and procurement
How to read an Accessibility Conformance Report.
A vendor hands you a report in the VPAT format. In ten minutes you can tell whether it is worth anything. This is how.
Template and report
The Information Technology Industry Council (ITI) publishes the Voluntary Product Accessibility Template, the VPAT. A vendor fills it in for one product and the result is an Accessibility Conformance Report, an ACR. People say “VPAT” for both. The current template is 2.5Rev, dated April 24, 2025, in four editions: 508 (the Revised Section 508 standards), EU (EN 301 549), WCAG (2.0, 2.1 and 2.2) and INT (all three together). A report on 2.4 or earlier predates the WCAG 2.2 criteria.
The four parts
- Product information. Name and version, the report date, a description, contact details, notes, the evaluation methods, and the standards the report covers. This half page tells you more about the report’s quality than the tables do.
- Terms. The template’s own definitions of the conformance levels, reproduced so the reader and the author mean the same thing.
- The tables. One row per success criterion, grouped by level (A, AA, AAA for WCAG; chapters 3 to 6 for Section 508). Each row has a conformance level and a remarks column.
- Legal disclaimer (optional).
What the conformance levels mean
| Level | The template’s meaning | How to read it |
|---|---|---|
| Supports | The functionality of the product has at least one method that meets the criterion without known defects, or meets it with equivalent facilitation. | Expect a remark anyway. “Supports” with an empty remarks cell on every row is the signature of a report nobody tested. |
| Partially Supports | Some functionality of the product does not meet the criterion. | The remark must say which functionality. “Some pages have issues” is not a remark. |
| Does Not Support | The majority of product functionality does not meet the criterion. | An honest report has some of these. Read the remark for the user impact and whether a fix is scheduled. |
| Not Applicable | The criterion is not relevant to the product. | Check the claim. A product with video cannot mark captions Not Applicable; a product with forms cannot mark error identification Not Applicable. |
| Not Evaluated | The product has not been evaluated against the criterion. Allowed only for WCAG Level AAA criteria. | On a Level A or AA row it is a gap, not a result. |
The five checks, in order
- Date and version. Is the report for the product and version you are buying, and is it less than a year old? Software changes; a two-year-old report describes a different product.
- Evaluation methods. The section should name the tools, the assistive technology and the browsers used, and the pages or workflows tested. “Tested with a screen reader” says nothing. “Keyboard-only and NVDA 2025.1 with Chrome on the checkout, search and account workflows; axe-core on 40 pages” says a lot. It should also say what was not tested.
- Who prepared it. Self-reported by the vendor, or prepared by a third party? Neither is disqualifying, but you weigh them differently, and the report should say which.
- The remarks column. Read ten rows at random. Every one should have a specific remark, including the Supports rows. A report that is all Supports and Not Applicable with empty remarks has not been through an evaluation.
- The pattern of results. Count the Does Not Support and Partially Supports rows at Level A and AA, then look at which criteria they are. Keyboard access (2.1.1), focus visibility (2.4.7), name, role and value (4.1.2), form labels (3.3.2) and error identification (3.3.1) decide whether a screen-reader or keyboard user can use the product at all. Colour contrast (1.4.3) decides whether a low-vision user can read it. Twelve cosmetic failures matter less than one 2.1.1.
Comparing two reports
Do not compare counts. Compare the Level A and AA rows for the criteria that matter to your users, and compare how each report was produced. A vendor whose report lists twenty Partially Supports rows with precise remarks and dates for fixes is telling you the truth; a vendor whose report is clean is, more often than not, telling you that nobody looked. Ask both the same follow-up questions and compare the answers.
Questions to ask the vendor
- Which pages, screens or workflows were tested, and which were not?
- Can you provide the test plan and the test results behind the report?
- Was any testing done with assistive technology, and which?
- For each Does Not Support and Partially Supports row at Level A or AA: what is the user impact, and when is the fix scheduled?
- When will the report be updated, and will you notify us when it is?
- Will you add accessibility obligations and the report to the contract?
What a complete report looks like
We publish two complete reports produced against the W3C’s Before and After Demonstration site, a public site with deliberate defects: the WCAG edition and the Section 508 edition, as PDF and DOCX, every row with a level and a remark, and the evaluation-methods section stating what was and was not tested. Use them as a yardstick for the reports you receive.
Questions
What is the difference between a VPAT and an ACR?
The VPAT is the blank template published by the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI). An Accessibility Conformance Report (ACR) is that template filled in for one product. Vendors often say VPAT for both.
Which version of the template is current?
VPAT 2.5Rev, dated April 24, 2025, in four editions: 508 (the Revised Section 508 standards), EU (EN 301 549), WCAG (2.0, 2.1 and 2.2), and INT (all three). A report on version 2.4 or earlier does not cover the WCAG 2.2 criteria.
Who is allowed to complete an ACR?
Anyone. Most are self-reported by the vendor's own staff; some are prepared by a third party. The report should say which, in its evaluation-methods section, and should say what was and was not tested.
Is an ACR a certification?
No. Nobody certifies ACRs. A report records what an evaluation found on a date. The buyer's job is to judge how much to trust it, which is what this guide is for.
What does Not Evaluated mean?
The product was not evaluated against that criterion. The template allows it only for WCAG Level AAA criteria. A Level A or AA row marked Not Evaluated is a gap in the report, not a result.
Sources
- ITI: the VPAT templates (2.5Rev, April 2025), including the terms and the author instructions.
- Section508.gov: Accessibility Conformance Reports and its ACR and VPAT FAQ.
- W3C: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.2.
VPAT is a registered trademark of the Information Technology Industry Council. Conformance Desk is not affiliated with ITI.
Need a report of your own?
A complete ACR in the 2.5 format, fixed price, three business days, every row with a remark, reviewed by an accessibility analyst before release.