Factor House Product VPAT

Our Commitment to Product Accessibility

Our mission at Factor House is to empower engineers with developer tools that are not only powerful and efficient but also inclusive and accessible.

We first published a VPAT in the release notes of Kpow for Apache Kafka v92.4 and you can find a VPAT available to download in every release of Kpow since.

Today, we are pleased to announce that we are extending that commitment to all future releases of Flex for Apache Flink and Flow Platform (currently in beta).

What is a VPAT and Why Does It Matter?

A Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) is a comprehensive document that evaluates how accessible a product is according to established accessibility standards.

For organisations evaluating products built by Factor House, a VPAT provides crucial information on whether a product can be used by people with accessibility needs and what we need to change so that it is.

Publishing a VPAT for each of our products demonstrates our commitment to ensuring that our tools can be effectively used by all developers. It also solidifies our position as a leader in developer tools, offering our customers the confidence that Kpow, Flex, and Flow meet the highest standards of accessibility.

Some concrete improvements to both product and process at Factor House through our commitment to web accessibility:

Screen Reader Compatibility

Factor House products are fully compatible with screen readers, allowing users with visual impairments to navigate and interact with our software effectively.

Keyboard Shortcuts

We implement ARIA Authoring Practices Guide (APG) patterns to deliver accessible elements. All Factor House UI widgets (such as buttons, menu buttons and dropdowns etc) implement the ARIA spec for keyboard interactions, roles, states and properties.

WCAG 2.1 AA Compliance

We’ve aligned our products with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 AA standards, ensuring that we meet the highest industry benchmarks for accessibility.

External Audits

Our commitment to accessibility was validated through an external audit conducted by AccessibilityOZ, a leading expert in accessibility assessments. Their thorough evaluation helped us identify areas for improvement and guided our efforts to enhance Kpow’s accessibility features.

Published VPAT

We publish our compliance to accessibility guidelines in a publicly available VPAT available in every product release. This document provides a detailed analysis of how our products meet various accessibility standards, giving our customers transparency and confidence in our product’s accessibility capabilities.

The Journey to VPAT Certification

The process of publishing a VPAT was rigorous and required significant enhancements to our products. There were four major steps that we had to undertake:

1. Our team had to become experts in WAI-ARIA standards to get each product to the point where we could submit to a VPAT audit.
2. We had to retrofit a large, complex, production-grade Web UI to one that achieved compliance with WCAG accessibility guidelines. It was hard, it was worth it, and if we are honest with ourselves it should have been something we had included from the start.
3. We adopted frontend libraries built with accessibility in mind, such as HeadlessUI and Echarts. Having such core components of our product ship with great accessibility standards built into their libraries certainly helps our team, and is a testament to the broader developer community.
4. We engaged an external consultant and auditor, AccessibilityOZ, who iterated with us to create the best, most accessible, outcome.

What Comes Next?

A commitment to publish a VPAT for each product release is a significant milestone, but it is by no means the end of the journey.

Accessibility is a constantly evolving field, and we are committed to staying at the forefront of best practices and emerging standards. We will continue to refine and improve our products, ensuring that they remain accessible to all users.

At Factor House, empowerment is a core value that drives our company and product development. The successful completion of our VPAT certification is a testament to our dedication to this value, and we are determined to continue in our role as a leader in developer tooling.

We would like to extend our sincere thanks to our customers, partners, and team members who have supported us on this journey. Together, we are making technology more inclusive and empowering every developer to achieve their full potential with Kpow.