Accessibility Procurement Intelligence

Stop Guessing.
Start Scoring VPATs.

Upload any VPAT or ACR and get an instant, objective accessibility score. Built for higher education and enterprise procurement teams who need to know what they're buying.

Private Beta

Currently in private beta  •  Not accepting new accounts

2.1 & 2.2
WCAG versions scored simultaneously
50+
WCAG criteria analyzed per VPAT
4
Aspects: Web, Software, Docs, Authoring
A+ to F
13-tier letter grade with procurement risk rating
How It Works

From VPAT upload to procurement decision in three steps

No training required. VPAT Score is the VPAT evaluator that does the interpretation work so your team doesn't have to.

1

Upload the VPAT or ACR

Drop in a PDF or Word document. VPAT Score parses the vendor's conformance claims automatically. No template mapping, no manual entry, no WCAG expertise required.

2

Review the Evaluation

See WCAG 2.1 and 2.2 scores, letter grades, risk ratings, non-conforming criteria, flagged vendor language, and procurement context all in one structured report.

3

Make the Call

Compare vendors, round up justified gaps, export the full VPAT analysis report, and generate email summaries with built-in approval recommendations for your procurement record.

Features

Everything your VPAT evaluation workflow needs

VPAT Score automates the time-consuming parts of Section 508 and WCAG accessibility procurement so your team can focus on decisions, not manual interpretation.

Instant VPAT Parsing

Drop in a PDF or Word VPAT and get structured, scored results in seconds. No manual data entry, no copying responses into spreadsheets. The VPAT checker does the reading for you and surfaces every criterion that matters. Works with AES-encrypted PDFs straight out of Adobe Acrobat — no "please save as unprotected" emails to your vendors.

Objective WCAG Scoring

WCAG 2.1 and WCAG 2.2 conformance grades on the full 13-tier scale (A+ through F) scored out of 1,000 points. Impact weights are derived from a research-backed model integrating WCAG normative analysis, US disability prevalence data, WebAIM Million failure prevalence, and ADA Title III lawsuit citations — not hand-curated opinions. A separate procurement risk rating (Low, Moderate, High, or Critical) reflects your organization's actual exposure, independent of the raw grade.

Hedge Language Detection

Automatically flags vendor remarks containing qualifying language like "most," "some," or "limited." These words signal incomplete conformance and warrant a closer look before approving a purchase.

Multi-Aspect VPAT Support

Separately scores Web, Software, Electronic Documents, and Authoring Tool aspects when vendors provide them, giving you a granular picture across every part of the product your users will interact with.

Round Up Workflow

When vendor remarks justify it, round up flagged criteria to Supports individually or all at once. Clone a review and round up every flagged item simultaneously to model a best-case scenario without altering the original.

PDF Export & Email Summaries

Export the full styled VPAT analysis report to PDF for procurement records. Generate a concise plain-text email summary (with an approval recommendation) that colleagues can read and act on without opening the full report.

Team Collaboration

Invite colleagues with role-based access (owner, admin, or member). Shared review history means your whole procurement team works from the same scored source of truth, not scattered email attachments or duplicated spreadsheets.

Context-Aware Risk Scoring

Risk ratings adapt to your organization. Define your user populations however fits your work — staff, customers, contractors, students, patients — along with annual contract value and whether the audience is bounded or unlimited. The scoring engine weights risk accordingly, so a product touching 5,000 people carries a different flag than one used by a team of ten.

Vendor Portfolio Management

Group reviews by vendor to compare all their products side by side. View combined multi-product reports, track evaluation history across contract cycles, and maintain a searchable audit trail of every VPAT your organization has reviewed.

Scoring Engine

Know the real risk, not just the numbers

A vendor saying "Partially Supports" on keyboard navigation is not the same as saying it on a color-contrast criterion. VPAT Score weights each criterion by its real-world impact on users with disabilities, then factors in your organization's specific exposure to produce a risk rating that actually reflects your procurement situation.

  • Critical criteria (keyboard, focus, screen reader) weighted highest in the score
  • Separate WCAG 2.1 and 2.2 scores graded side by side
  • Full 13-tier A+ through F conformance grade plus a separate organizational risk rating
  • Risk adapts to your user populations, audience scope, and contract value
  • Impact weights derived from public research (WebAIM Million, CDC, ADA Title III data) — not opinion
  • Customizable grade thresholds and user-population ceilings for your organization
C
WCAG 2.1 Score
72.4% High
F
WCAG 2.2 Score
61.0% Critical
31
Supports
11
Partially Supports
4
Does Not Support
Language Analysis

Give vendors the benefit of the doubt, confidently

When a vendor says "Partially Supports" but their remarks show they're genuinely close, that context matters. VPAT Score surfaces qualifying language so procurement teams can make an informed call to round up, rewarding vendor transparency rather than penalizing it. Every adjustment is auditable and reversible.

  • Flags qualifying language like "most," "some," and "limited" for human review
  • Review Language badge surfaces remarks worth a second look
  • Round Up criteria individually or all at once when the remarks justify it
  • Clone & Round Up preserves the original while modeling a best-case scenario
Criterion Status Vendor Remarks
1.4.3 Partial Review Language
"Most text meets contrast requirements…"
2.4.7 Partial Review Language
"Focus is visible on some components…"
1.1.1 Supports All images include descriptive alt text.
Who Uses It

Built for any organization that buys software

Wherever accessibility compliance drives procurement decisions, VPAT Score provides the structured VPAT evaluation that replaces guesswork with documented, defensible analysis.

🎓

Higher Education

Colleges and universities face heightened accessibility obligations under Section 508 and the ADA. VPAT Score helps accessibility and IT procurement offices evaluate edtech, LMS platforms, and administrative software against WCAG standards, with flexible user-population context (define faculty, staff, students, or any group that fits your institution) built into every risk rating.

🏛️

Government & Public Sector

Federal and state agencies require Section 508 conformance documentation for every technology procurement. VPAT Score converts ACR documents into auditable, scored records that satisfy documentation requirements and support exception workflows when conformance falls short of the required threshold.

🏢

Enterprise Procurement

Large organizations managing dozens of vendor relationships cannot afford to evaluate VPATs manually. VPAT Score's vendor portfolio view and batch operations let procurement and IT accessibility teams process multiple products simultaneously and maintain a searchable history of every VPAT evaluation.

Built for procurement accountability. Every VPAT Score evaluation is traceable to specific WCAG criteria and vendor remarks. Export the full report, generate email summaries with approval recommendations, and maintain a complete audit trail. When someone asks how a purchasing decision was made, you have a documented, defensible answer.

Structured Analysis vs. AI Summaries

Not all VPAT tools are the same

Some tools feed a VPAT to a large language model and return a paragraph. That's a summary, not an evaluation. There's a meaningful difference between the two, especially when procurement decisions carry legal and financial weight.

Capability Manual Review AI / LLM Summarizer VPAT Score
Consistent results for the same VPAT Varies by reviewer Varies by run Always identical
Impact-weighted criterion scoring If reviewer knows WCAG Not supported Built-in, 50+ criteria
Comparable A+ to F grade across vendors No standard scale Unstructured output WCAG 2.1 & 2.2 grades
Organization-specific risk rating Manual judgment No context awareness Staff, students, contract value
Hedge language detection If reviewer catches it Inconsistent Automatic flagging
Auditable, traceable scoring decisions Only if documented Black box output Criterion-level detail
Round up justified gaps Manual, untracked Not supported Per-criterion with audit trail
Vendor portfolio comparison Spreadsheet only One-off results Side-by-side at a glance
Procurement email with recommendation Written from scratch Generic AI text Context-aware, editable
We present the facts. You make the final decision.

VPAT Score applies a deterministic, documented scoring rubric to every VPAT it analyzes. No hallucinations. No guesswork. Every grade is traceable back to the specific criterion that produced it.

VPAT & ACR Explained

What is a VPAT? What is an ACR?

Whether you're new to accessibility procurement or managing a portfolio of vendor evaluations, understanding the document at the center of the process is essential.

What is a VPAT?

A VPAT (Voluntary Product Accessibility Template) is a standardized document that software vendors use to self-report how their product aligns with accessibility standards. The word "voluntary" is intentional: no external auditor reviews the claims, no independent lab certifies the results. A vendor evaluates their own product against WCAG and Section 508 criteria and publishes those findings. What arrives in your inbox is a disclosure, a snapshot of accessibility claims at a moment in time, not a certification of compliance.

What is an ACR?

An ACR (Accessibility Conformance Report) is the completed, published version of a VPAT. The relationship is straightforward: the VPAT is the blank standardized template created by the IT Industry Council; the ACR is what emerges when a vendor fills that template out for a specific product. In procurement conversations, both terms are used interchangeably. When a colleague asks a vendor to "send their VPAT," they are almost always requesting the completed ACR.

Why evaluation matters

Reading a VPAT without a scoring framework is like reading a nutritional label without knowing what's healthy. The information is present, but interpreting its implications requires expertise. A product that "Partially Supports" keyboard navigation and one that "Partially Supports" a link-purpose criterion are not remotely equivalent risks. The first affects every user who doesn't use a mouse; the second is a narrower gap. VPAT Score translates vendor claims into weighted conformance grades and organizational risk ratings so procurement teams can compare products on equal footing.

Common Questions

Frequently asked questions about VPATs, ACRs & VPAT evaluation

Answers to the questions accessibility professionals and procurement teams ask most, about the documents, the evaluation process, and how VPAT Score fits in.

A VPAT (Voluntary Product Accessibility Template) is a standardized self-assessment document that software vendors complete to describe how their product addresses accessibility standards, primarily WCAG and Section 508. It matters for procurement because organizations subject to accessibility mandates (federal agencies, universities, state entities) are required to evaluate the accessibility of technology before purchasing it. The VPAT is the primary mechanism vendors use to communicate that accessibility posture. Because it is self-reported with no independent verification, the quality and detail of a VPAT varies enormously, which is precisely why a structured VPAT evaluation tool is valuable.
A VPAT evaluator is a tool or process that assesses the content of a completed VPAT or ACR and translates vendor claims into actionable procurement intelligence. Reading a VPAT manually requires deep WCAG expertise: you need to know which criteria carry the highest impact, recognize when a vendor's remarks signal incomplete conformance, and translate dozens of "Partially Supports" entries into a coherent risk picture with no standard rubric to work from. VPAT Score automates that process with a deterministic, impact-weighted scoring engine that applies the same rubric to every VPAT it analyzes. The result is a comparable grade, a risk rating, and a full criterion-level breakdown, produced consistently, in seconds, with no prior WCAG expertise required from the reviewer.
The VPAT is the blank template, a standardized form published by the IT Industry Council (ITI) that defines the structure vendors must follow. An ACR (Accessibility Conformance Report) is the completed document that results when a vendor fills out that template for a specific product or service. In day-to-day procurement language, both terms refer to the same document. If a vendor says "our VPAT is available on request," they mean their completed ACR. VPAT Score accepts either term and processes the underlying document the same way regardless of what the vendor calls it.
AI language models read VPAT text and generate summarized opinions. They cannot consistently apply impact weights across criteria, may misinterpret conformance levels, produce results that vary between runs, and offer no comparable grade you can use across vendors. VPAT Score uses a deterministic, research-backed scoring engine: the same VPAT produces the same score every time, every criterion is evaluated against weights derived from public data (WCAG normative analysis, US disability prevalence, WebAIM Million failure prevalence, ADA Title III lawsuit citations, assistive-technology dependency), and results are expressed on the full 13-tier A+ through F scale and risk ratings that mean the same thing across every report your team has ever run. We present the facts. You make the final decision.
"Partially Supports" is one of four conformance levels defined by the VPAT template. It indicates that the product meets the accessibility criterion in some situations but not all. The critical issue with "Partially Supports" is that it covers an enormous range, from "works in almost every case except one edge scenario" to "works for some users but fails consistently for others." The significance depends entirely on which criterion it applies to. Partial support on 1.4.3 (contrast) is a different procurement risk than partial support on 2.1.1 (keyboard navigation). VPAT Score weights each criterion by its impact category so partial support on a critical criterion is reflected proportionally in the final grade.
Modern VPATs using the 2.x template framework can address WCAG 2.1 and WCAG 2.2 at Level A and Level AA, as well as the Revised Section 508 Standards and EN 301 549 (the European standard). In practice, most vendors report against WCAG 2.1 Level AA because it is the current Section 508 benchmark. VPAT Score analyzes against both WCAG 2.1 and WCAG 2.2 simultaneously, producing separate conformance scores and grades for each version so you can see exactly where a product stands against both the current standard and the emerging one.
Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act requires U.S. federal agencies, and organizations that receive federal funding, to ensure that the information and communication technology they procure, develop, or use is accessible to people with disabilities. VPATs are the primary mechanism vendors use to communicate Section 508 conformance. When a federal agency or university issues an RFP, they typically require vendors to provide a completed VPAT or ACR demonstrating how their product addresses Section 508 and WCAG Level AA requirements. VPAT Score's evaluation output includes all the information needed to document Section 508 due diligence in a procurement record.
No. A VPAT is a vendor self-assessment. The vendor describes their own product's conformance with no independent verification required. An accessibility audit is a structured independent evaluation conducted by accessibility professionals who test the product directly against WCAG or Section 508 criteria. VPATs are the standard starting point for procurement because they are widely available and free to request; independent audits are more authoritative but require hiring testers and coordinating access to the product. VPAT Score helps procurement teams extract the maximum intelligence from the VPAT they already have, without waiting for an audit that may never come.
Not by the document itself. The VPAT has no built-in grade or threshold. It is a disclosure form, and a vendor can honestly report significant accessibility gaps and still be selling that product tomorrow. But the more important question is what those gaps mean for the people who will use the software. When a product does not support keyboard navigation or screen reader use, real people are excluded from participating in tools their organization depends on. Accessibility is not just a compliance checkbox. VPAT Score gives procurement teams an objective grade and a clear picture of where the gaps are, so they can weigh their compliance obligations alongside their responsibility to every member of their community.
The ITI recommends that vendors update their ACRs when a new version of a product releases, when significant accessibility improvements are made, or at minimum annually. In practice, many vendors update infrequently. VPAT Score's re-analysis feature lets procurement teams re-score a previously uploaded VPAT whenever a vendor provides an updated ACR, preserving the original scoring record while adding the new assessment. You always have a historical audit trail of how a vendor's accessibility conformance has changed across contract cycles.
Yes. VPAT Score's vendor portfolio feature lets you group multiple VPAT evaluations under a single vendor, then view a combined multi-product report that aggregates scores across all reviewed products. This is especially useful when a vendor offers a suite of products, each with its own VPAT, and your organization needs to understand the overall accessibility picture before committing to a platform purchase. You can also generate a single email summary that covers all products in the evaluation, with an aggregate grade and risk rating.

Resources

Guides, Tools & Audience Pages

What is a VPAT?
What is an ACR?
How to Evaluate a VPAT
VPAT vs ACR
Section 508 Compliance
WCAG Compliance
Higher Education
Government Procurement
Enterprise
VPAT Checker
VPAT Evaluator
FAQs

You Won't Evaluate a VPAT the Old Way Again.

Spreadsheets don't give you answers. LLM prompts might be wrong. Hunting through PDF folders isn't a procurement strategy. Just upload, score, and decide. Accessibility professionals and procurement teams who try VPAT Score don't go back.

Private Beta

Currently in private beta. Public availability has not been scheduled.

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