The method, applied · vendor conformance documentation
Your buyers have a list. It is longer than yours
The same tracing work, pointed at your own documentation. What does your conformance report actually claim, what does the statute require alongside it, and where does the chain between them break. We read it the way the institution deciding your renewal will.
One row from a conformance report, read twice
What you wrote
2.1.1 Keyboard · Level A
Partially Supports
Drag-and-drop interactions are not operable by keyboard. Authors can provide an accessible alternative.
What the buyer reads
A Level A failure in a signature feature, and the mitigation transfers the work to our staff.
Every nonconforming area needs a completion date under § 2.2-3503. This row has none.
Does the scope statement even cover the tool our faculty author in?
Nothing in what you wrote is wrong. It is candid, and candor is the right instinct. The difficulty is that a buyer reads it against an obligation with a date attached.
Illustrative. Not drawn from any vendor's published report.
The trigger
Two documents, and the second has no template
Virginia Code § 2.2-3503 requires a vendor to certify that its product conforms. Where it cannot, the institution may require an Accessibility Conformance Report, and any nonconformance must then be documented with a vendor-paid roadmap that includes a timeline for each area's completion.
Almost every conformance report marks at least one criterion as partially supported. So almost every vendor is in roadmap territory, and the roadmap requirement is one sentence of statute: no published template, no accepted format, no shared understanding of what a buyer should accept.
Vendors are being asked for a document nobody has defined, by institutions unsure what good looks like, at the point a renewal is decided. Their compliance date is April 26, 2027, and the requests will keep arriving from every Virginia public customer you hold.
This is already in the contract
It is not only statute. VITA's Mandatory Core Contractual Terms, which Commonwealth information technology contracts incorporate by reference, are effective April 24, 2026 and carry the requirement at clause 11. A supplier must certify that the technology conforms with accessibility as defined at Va. Code § 2.2-3501. Where it cannot certify full conformance, it must provide a supplier-paid Accessibility Conformance Report stating the level of conformance, and a supplier-paid Vendor Accessibility Roadmap documenting every nonconforming area with a timeline for each one's completion.
The cost of proving conformance, and the cost of planning remediation where you cannot prove it, fall on the supplier by the express terms of the agreement. Mandatory Core Contractual Terms, retrieved August 26, 2026.
The review
What we look at
Two weeks. A written review of how your documentation reads from the buyer's side, a specification for a defensible roadmap, and a response position you can reuse.
Your report, as a buyer reads it
Scope statement first, where most reports fail on close reading: the end-user view but not the authoring experience, or the platform but not the content delivered through it. Then version, date, criteria marked partially supported, and the remarks column, where the real position lives.
Your roadmap, against the statute
Whether one exists, whether every nonconforming area carries a completion date, whether it traces to the report so no gap is silently dropped, and whether progress against a previous roadmap is documented.
Which obligations reach you
The distinction vendors most often get wrong. Content provided through a contract or license is the institution's obligation, so their exposure becomes your problem at renewal rather than never becoming yours. Federal agency sales bring Section 508 separately.
The terms you will be asked to accept
Conformance obligations, evidence on a cycle, dated remediation commitments, and a remedy. Which are standard, which are negotiable, and what the buyer is trying to protect against.
Boundaries
What this is not
Stated plainly, because a service implying coverage it lacks is worth less than a narrow one.
Outside this engagement
- Not a conformance test. We run automated checks to orient the review. Automated tools detect a minority of conformance failures under any ruleset, so they cannot establish that a product conforms, and the absence of a finding is not evidence of conformance. This review makes no conformance determination.
- Not report writing. Producing a conformance report honestly requires testing, and that is a different kind of firm.
- Not certification. We do not endorse or validate any conformance claim, and we will not tell you your position is adequate so that you can send that to a buyer.
- Not legal advice. Where the question is legal it belongs with counsel, and we will say so.
Why us
The same method, from the buyer's side
Our practice traces documents to the authority that governs them and shows where the chain has broken. Applied to a public institution, that produces an accessibility position. Applied to a vendor, it produces the same picture from the other end: what your report claims, what the statute requires, and what a careful reader will find between them.
We do not maintain the authorities. We maintain the trace of them, for Virginia libraries, school divisions and higher education, each with a section on reading a vendor conformance report. That analysis is written for the buyer, which is the useful direction to advise you from.
Not a claim to be the deepest accessibility specialists in the market. A claim to have worked out, in writing, what a careful buyer will ask you.
Scope and price
Fixed scope, fixed price, a deliverable you keep
Conformance Readiness Review: $9,000
Two weeks. Your conformance report read as a buyer reads it, your roadmap assessed against § 2.2-3503, the obligations that reach you as distinct from those that reach your customer, and the contract terms you will be asked to accept. Delivered as a written review, a specification for a defensible roadmap, and a reusable response position.
Additional products
The review covers one product and its documentation. Where several products carry separate conformance reports, each is scoped and priced in the statement of work before work begins.
What we need from you
Your current conformance report or reports, any roadmap you hold, a recent procurement questionnaire you have been asked to complete, and thirty minutes with whoever owns the answer internally. Findings go to you alone: we do not share, publish, or discuss your position with your customers.
Half an hour, and nothing owed if it is not useful
Send us your current conformance report and any roadmap you hold. We will tell you on the call whether there is anything here worth doing, including if there is not.
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