Does Atlassian have a VPAT for 508 compliance?
Asked by Doug Earp:

Does Atlassian have a VPAT for 508 compliance for Confluence?

The Voluntary Product Accessibility Template?, or VPAT?, is a tool used to document a product's conformance with the accessibility standards under Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. The purpose of the VPAT is to assist Federal contracting officials and other buyers in making preliminary assessments regarding the availability of commercial "Electronic and Information Technology" products and services with features that support accessibility.   

It is assumed and recommended that offerers will provide additional contact information to facilitate more detailed inquiries.

To download a Word Version of the VPAT [Click Here](http://www.itic.org/clientuploads/resources/ITI-VPAT-v1.3.doc)  


Answers:
author: Sean Curtis
body: <https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/ACCESSIBILITY/Confluence+VPAT+for+Section+508+compliance>

We have only audited the main user tasks (logging in, creating content, commenting, etc) at the moment, but that document should provide a rough overview of how things stand.

More general Accessibility information and contact info is available here: <https://www.atlassian.com/accessibility>


author: Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
body: Never heard of it. You might want to tell us which one of the 196(ish) countries in the world this is from?


author: Deepa Siddharthan
body: 1. Open the topic/page containing the image in the Confluence Editor.
2. Select the image and click Edit.
3. Fill the Title and Alternate Text fields.
4. Click OK to save your changes.


author: Stephen Gramm
body: How to you do this exactly so that ALT Text displays correctly? Thanks in advance for your help.


author: Deepa Siddharthan
body: Is there a way to track if the images on the Confluence wiki page are 508-compliant or not?   
Currently, we must manually locate and hover over each image to check if the image shows Alt Text. If not, edit the page, and modify the Title field to display the correct Alt Text.

FYI, updating only Alternate Text field for images has no effect. You must update the Title field for images to display Alternate text.


author: Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
body: David, I'm very aware of web accessibility issues, I've worked with heavily visually impaired people and their helper organisations quite a lot, as well as people with other communication issues. My main client at the moment has an absolute mandate to make their output accessable to the widest possible audience. They provide quite a popular website, so we're very very aware of all of this.

Despite this, I've never heard of that random string pointing to some country-specific legislation. It's utterly irrelevant in my country (and meta-state), and in fact, to most of the world. The countries in which I've worked have significantly more stringent accessibility laws.  

My point is not that the question has been asked, it's a prefectly good question at it's core, and it deserves an answer, which Larry has given. But the question assumes the whole world is aware of laws in one country. I can't remember most of the laws in my own country, let alone the rest of the world.


author: David at David Simpson Apps
body: @Nic Brough: Some web accessibility resources...

* <http://www.section508.gov/>
* <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_508_Amendment_to_the_Rehabilitation_Act_of_1973>
* <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_accessibility>


author: Larry Talley
body: The status of U.S. section 508 compliance has been documented at <http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DISC/Confluence+Section+508+Accessibility+Compliance>


Tags: compliance

vpat