HECVAC & VPAT forms

[dmichael]

Hello,
Has your company filled out the HECVAC & VPAT forms?

Beginning this next academic year, all California Community Colleges, including our college, Diablo Valley College, are required to submit a completed VPAT (Voluntary Product Accessibility Template) and a completed HECVAC (Higher Education Community Vendor Assessment Toolkit) for any instructional software used in the classroom. This is part of a new statewide IT compliance requirement.

We truly value your software as an industry-standard tool for our Digital Arts program and want to ensure our students have access to it. Please let us know if your team can complete these forms, or if there’s anything you need from us to support the process.

Thank You,
Doug Michael

Diablo Valley College
321 Golf Club Road
Pleasant Hill, CA 94523
Music Industry Studies
Music Industry Instructor
Senior Music Lab Coordinator

DVC Music Industry Studies
Art Digital Media

 

[blakeboman]

I came here to request something similar. I just want to chime in that this is not just a California state mandate, it is a federal mandate (Section 508), and all institutions of higher education in the United States are subject to these laws beginning April of 2026. If we do not obtain a VPAT from vendors/developers for their software to verify accessibility compliance, we will be unable to use the software for instruction or any computer labs provided for student/public use. Software developers will need to ensure their software complies with WCAG 2.1 requirements and provide a VPAT by April. I work for a higher education institution in Texas, and we are being told the same thing as Doug. I've been told by our administration that no exceptions will be made.

Please see these links for more information about this:
https://www.section508.gov/sell/acr/
https://www.itic.org/policy/accessibility/vpat