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Re: VPATs for Word, PPT, Excel, etc

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From: Jonathan Avila
Date: Jun 1, 2018 7:35PM

The revised Section 508 standards more clearly cover non-web electronic documents including public and 9 types of non-public documents. VPAT 2.x which includes the WCAG 2 criteria referenced by Section 508 specifically have designated line items for indicating the level of support for electronic documents for each success criteria. Generally electronic documents listed in VPATs are those associated with a product or service. However this does not have to be the case. A government agency could ask for a VPAT for any ICT including electronic documents.

Asking for a VPAT for each document does seem a little bit much and while I agree there are certainly better ways it is a reasonable ask in particular for complex or long documents. With any VPAT the information provided may not accurately describe the level of support for any ICT and the results should be backed up by test results. A clean automated test checklist is a start toward automating that process but in itself does not fully address all of the requirements.

Jonathan

Jonathan Avila
Chief Accessibility Officer
Level Access
<EMAIL REMOVED>
703.637.8957 office

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