The VPAT and Vendor Resources

The Voluntary Product Accessibility Template®, or VPAT®, allows those who procure goods or services to make preliminary assessments regarding the accessibility of Electronic and Information Resources (EIR). By outlining how EIR measure up to specific criteria, the VPAT allows for comparisons of EIR being considered to fulfill a business need.

Vendors may voluntarily provide the VPAT on their websites as part of their product or service offerings, however you may need to request it when contemplating an EIR purchase. There may be no perfectly accessible product to meet a given business need, however with proper research and/or modifications to configurations and settings, users with disabilities may still be able to utilize it effectively.

Helpful resources:

• Procurement tips including use of the VPAT®
• The current Section 508 VPAT® can be found on the ITI website in the "Resources" section near the bottom of the VPAT® page.

Sections of the VPAT

The template is broken into two main sections:

• Essential Requirements and Best Practices for Information & Communications Technology (ICT) Vendors
• The VPAT® Template; utilize Table 1 and Table 2 criteria to meet Level AA conformance, our designated Texas A&M standard

The tables provide more detailed views of criteria for various platforms. Within all tables:

• Column one describes the accessibility criteria.
• The second column describes the conformance level.*
• The last column contains any additional remarks and explanations regarding the EIR, testing methodology and/or conformance.

*Data within the second column includes the status of the EIR with regard to each of the accessibility criteria. The conformance levels are as follows:

• 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 within Level AAA criteria.

The answers need to be clear with respect to what individual criterion the answer applies to. It is possible to either use a summary, selecting the worst case for the criteria, or to have separate answers or even tables for software, support documentation, authoring tools, etc., so long as the methodology used is made clear.