ACR (Accessibility Conformance Report)
An Accessibility Conformance Report is the completed, filled-in VPAT that documents a product's actual conformance findings.
An Accessibility Conformance Report (ACR) is the finished document that results from completing a VPAT. The VPAT is the blank template; the ACR is what you have once a vendor has evaluated a specific product against the relevant standard and filled in the conformance ratings and remarks. In everyday conversation the two terms are often used interchangeably, but the distinction is real and worth keeping straight.
An ACR documents, criterion by criterion, how a product performs against a chosen standard such as the Revised Section 508 Standards, WCAG, or EN 301 549. For each applicable criterion it records a conformance level, most commonly Supports, Partially Supports, Does Not Support, or Not Applicable, with supporting remarks. Taken together, the ratings give a buyer a structured, comparable picture of a product's accessibility strengths and gaps.
ACRs are primarily a procurement instrument. Government agencies and increasingly large private buyers request them during market research and evaluation so they can compare products and satisfy their own accessibility obligations. A thorough, honest ACR that clearly states where a product partially supports a criterion, with a remediation note, reads far better to an experienced buyer than a suspiciously perfect one.
Because an ACR reflects a particular product version at a particular time, it needs to be maintained. As a product changes, its conformance changes, and a report that predates the version under evaluation loses credibility. Grounding the report in repeatable testing, and refreshing it when the product ships significant changes, is what keeps an ACR useful rather than merely decorative.
Sources
Primary references for the facts on this page. Links open in a new tab.
Generate an ACR starting point
The VPAT starter generator produces a draft ACR from your scan results, pre-filling the machine-testable criteria so you can focus your manual testing where it counts.
Draft an ACR from a scanRelated terms
VPAT (Voluntary Product Accessibility Template)
A VPAT is a standardized template, published by ITI, that vendors use to document how their product conforms to accessibility standards.
VPAT vs ACR
The VPAT is the blank template; the ACR is the completed report you produce by filling it in, so every ACR starts life as a VPAT.
Section 508
Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act requires U.S. federal agencies to make their electronic and information technology accessible, using WCAG 2.0 Level AA as the technical standard.
WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines)
WCAG is the W3C's technical standard for making web content accessible, and the benchmark most accessibility laws point to.
Check your own site
Run a free scan against WCAG 2.2 Level AA. You get a score, a severity breakdown, and fix suggestions in seconds. Automated scanning covers the machine-testable criteria; pair it with manual testing for full coverage.