Writing an Accessibility Conformance Report a Client Can Actually Use
Clients receive conformance reports and VPAT documents they cannot read, then file them away. How agencies should write reports that drive fixes instead of gathering dust.
At some point a client will ask for the paperwork: a conformance report, a VPAT, an ACR, something a procurement team or a lawyer requested. Agencies usually produce a dense grid of criteria and conformance levels that answers the legal question and tells the store almost nothing about what to do next. The document gets filed, the barriers stay, and everyone feels oddly worse off.
A conformance report can satisfy the formal request and still be a working document. The difference is structure: lead with what a shopper hits, translate criteria into store language, and attach an order of work. The grid stays, because the grid is what was asked for, but it stops being the whole report.
Start with the shopper, not the standard
Open the report with a short plain language summary: which tasks are affected, which pages carry the worst barriers, and what a disabled shopper experiences today. Two pages at most. Executives and store managers will read this part, and it is the part that gets budget approved. The criterion by criterion tables belong after it, complete and accurate, as the formal record they were commissioned to be.
Translate every criterion into store terms
Each finding should pair the formal criterion with a concrete description: not just a success criterion number, but the cart drawer, the unlabeled filter button, the video without captions. Include the page or template, a screenshot or recording where useful, and the fix effort in rough terms. A client who can picture the barrier can prioritize it. A client staring at a grid of partially supports cannot.
Attach a remediation order, not just a list
Reports fail when they hand over forty findings with no sequence. Group findings by template so one fix clears many pages, rank blockers ahead of polish, and mark which items the agency can fix, which need a vendor, and which are content work the client owns. That ordering turns the report into a project plan the client can approve line by line, instead of a verdict they can only accept or ignore.
Date it, scope it, and say what it is not
State which pages, templates, and flows were evaluated, on which date, with which methods and tools, and which areas were out of scope, such as third party checkout steps or PDFs. Conformance claims decay as the site changes, and an honest scope statement protects both sides later. Offer the retest as a defined step after remediation, so the report's final state can be updated from assertion to verified.
Related reading
If this topic is useful, these earlier guides go deeper on connected questions: Accessible Shopify Search and Filtering: Facets, Autocomplete, and Screen Readers, Accessibility Handover Notes: What to Document When a Client Changes Agencies, and Accessible Product Videos: Captions, Transcripts, and Audio Choices for Agency Clients.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between a VPAT and an ACR?
A VPAT is the template, the blank form used to report how a product meets accessibility criteria. A completed VPAT, filled in with evaluation results, is the Accessibility Conformance Report, or ACR. Clients asking for a VPAT usually want the completed report.
Can an agency write a conformance report for its own work?
It can, and many do, but the report should state who evaluated, by what methods, and note the relationship plainly. For high stakes procurements or disputes, an independent evaluation carries more weight, and a good agency says so.
How long does a conformance report stay valid?
Only until the site changes in ways that affect the evaluated areas, which for an active store can be weeks. Treat the report as dated evidence about a specific version of the site, and refresh it after major changes or remediation.
Should a report list every minor issue found?
The formal tables should be complete for the criteria in scope. Minor issues belong there, marked honestly, while the summary and remediation order make clear which findings matter first. Completeness in the record, priority in the plan.