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Voluntary Product Accessibility Template

By Urte Meinhardt, Accessibility Competence Center, SAP User Experience, SAP AG – 06/07/2005

How can you reasonably assess whether a product is accessible? One step worth taking is to identify whether the producer has voluntarily provided information about the accessibility of their products. Many vendors have done so with a simple, standard Web-based template known as the Voluntary Product Accessibility template, or VPAT.

The VPAT was developed by the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI) in partnership with the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA). Its purpose is to assist federal contracting and procurement officials in fulfilling the market research requirements contained within the Section 508 implementation regulations that require that federal agencies consider accessibility when they procure electronic and information technology.

Electronic and information technology companies are encouraged to routinely produce VPATs and post them on their company Websites. As of June 2004, over six hundred products were featured in the "Buy Accessible" database.

ITI provides an overview of the VPAT, instructions for getting started, a description of how the VPAT is organized, and suggested language for completing the VPAT, plus additional resources.

Even companies that do not sell their electronic and information technology products to the federal government should be encouraged to use the VPAT as a starting point for evaluating their products' accessibility, and organizations outside of the federal government (e.g., educational entities) are finding the VPATs to be an excellent tool for procurement decisions.

 

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