VPAT

A VPAT is the Voluntary Product Accessibility Template, published free by the Information Technology Industry Council. For most B2B SaaS companies it appears as a procurement request that arrives late in a deal and stalls it.

The commercial fact underneath the acronym: enterprise and public-sector buyers cannot purchase without one, and the request usually lands after the product demo went well.

VPAT or ACR

The template is the VPAT. The completed document, with your testing results in it, is an Accessibility Conformance Report.

Nearly everyone calls the finished report a VPAT anyway, buyers included, so this is not a distinction to correct anybody on. It matters when you are reading ITI's own materials and the names appear to disagree.

Current version is VPAT 2.5Rev, released April 2025. VPAT is a registered service mark of ITI and the form is not supposed to be altered.

Four editions, and picking the wrong one wastes the work

Pick the edition matching the obligation your buyer is under. INT is the safe default for anyone selling into more than one market, and it is the one to reach for when the buyer's request does not say.

The four answers

Each criterion is marked one of:

Supports — meets it.

Partially supports — meets some of it. This wording replaced "supports with exceptions" at the request of the US Access Board.

Does not support — does not meet it.

Not applicable — the criterion does not apply to this product.

⚠️ A report marked "supports" on every row reads as untested. Experienced buyers treat a flawless VPAT as a red flag, not a green one. Real products have gaps, and a report that names them alongside a remediation timeline is more persuasive than one that claims perfection.

Voluntary means self-declared

Nobody certifies a VPAT. The vendor writes it.

Which is why buyers who know what they are doing ask who did the testing. A report backed by an independent accessibility audit carries weight that a self-assessment by the team that built the product does not, and saying so in the report itself is an advantage rather than an admission.

In practice

A Series B SaaS company reaches procurement at a large customer and is asked for a VPAT. Nobody on the team has heard the term. The deal goes on hold.

The instinct is to fill in the template quickly and mark everything as supporting. That produces a document that fails the buyer's review, because their accessibility team reads it against the product, finds keyboard traps in the main workflow, and now has a credibility problem on top of a conformance one.

The faster route is an honest report: test against WCAG 2.2 level AA, mark the gaps accurately, and attach dates for fixing them. Buyers approve products with known gaps and a plan far more often than teams expect. What they reject is a report they cannot trust.

Where teams get it wrong

• Meeting the request for the first time in a deal. The cheapest time to have one is before it is asked for.
• Marking everything "supports". Reads as untested and invites scrutiny.
• Choosing the wrong edition. A 508 report handed to a European buyer answers the wrong standard.
• Confusing it with certification. It is a self-declaration, and buyers know it.
• Writing it without testing. The gap surfaces in their review, not yours.