Accessibility statement, VPAT, and ACR: which one do you need?
Gideon Awolesi ·
Teams often get asked for an accessibility report and aren't sure what the person asking means. Sometimes it's an accessibility statement for your website, and sometimes it's an Accessibility Conformance Report for a procurement team. They're different documents, written for different readers, and you may need both.
01What an accessibility statement is
An accessibility statement is a page on your website for your customers. It describes how people with disabilities can use the service, which standard you tested against, the parts that aren't accessible yet, and how to contact you when something doesn't work.
If you sell to consumers in the EU, the European Accessibility Act requires you to publish this information, in your general terms and conditions or an equivalent document (Article 13(2) and Annex V). Public sector bodies have to publish one under the Web Accessibility Directive, following an EU model.
02What a VPAT and an ACR are
A VPAT, or Voluntary Product Accessibility Template, is a template published by the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI). Once you fill it in for your product, it's called an Accessibility Conformance Report, or ACR. The current version is VPAT 2.5Rev, and it comes in four editions:
| Edition | What it reports against |
|---|---|
| 508 | The US Section 508 standards, used in US federal procurement |
| EU | EN 301 549, the European standard for ICT accessibility |
| WCAG | The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines |
| INT | All three of the above, in one report |
An ACR goes through the standard one criterion at a time. For each one, it records a conformance level, like Supports, Partially Supports, or Does Not Support, with remarks that explain the gaps.
03How they compare
| Accessibility statement | ACR | |
|---|---|---|
| Who reads it | Your customers, including people with disabilities | Procurement, IT, and legal teams buying your product |
| What's in it | How to use the service, what isn't accessible yet, and how to get help | A conformance level and remarks for every criterion in the standard |
| Where it's published | A page on your website, linked from your terms | Usually sent on request during a sale |
04Which one you need
If you sell to consumers in the EU, you need the statement, because the European Accessibility Act requires the information it contains. If you sell software to large companies or to public bodies, their procurement teams will often ask for an ACR. US federal agencies assess what they buy against the Section 508 standards, and the 508 edition of the VPAT is the usual way to report on them.
A lot of B2B SaaS companies need both: a statement on the website for their users, and an ACR in the sales folder for buyers. Both have to describe the same product honestly, so if your ACR says Partially Supports for keyboard access, your statement can't say the service fully meets WCAG.
05What both of them need underneath
Both documents describe the results of testing, so they're only as good as the testing behind them. Automated tools find a part of the problems. For the rest, someone has to go through the key journeys by hand with a keyboard and a screen reader.
You can write a first draft of the statement with our free accessibility statement generator. Our Accessibility Audit tests up to five key journeys by hand against WCAG 2.2 AA in two weeks, from €5,500, and includes a draft accessibility statement.