Your website's PDFs have a deadline. We fix them.
Agendas, minutes, budgets, forms, notices. Under the ADA Title II web rule, the documents you post and the ones people use to reach your services have to meet WCAG 2.1 AA, so people using screen readers, keyboards, magnification, and other assistive technology can use them, with a few narrow exceptions. TaggedRight takes the backlog off your desk and returns documents that pass automated checks and a person's review, with a report you can hand to your council or board.
The deadlines
- Public entities with a total population of 50,000 or more
- April 26, 2027
- Public entities with a total population under 50,000, and every special district government
- April 26, 2028
Which population counts. For a city or county it is the total population in the 2020 Census, not the number of people you serve. A special district government (a water district or a MUD, for example) has the 2028 date whatever its size.
Independent school districts. An independent school district is not a special district government under the rule. Its date depends on the district's population estimate in the Census Bureau's 2022 Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates (SAIPE), not on its enrollment: 50,000 or more means April 26, 2027; under 50,000 means April 26, 2028.
Dates as extended by the Department of Justice interim final rule published April 20, 2026. The rule requires web content and mobile apps, including posted documents, to meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA. See the Department's first steps and fact sheet. This is general information, not legal advice: confirm your own date and obligations with your attorney.
Which documents the rule covers
Most of what you post has to conform, and so does anything people use to apply for, get to, or take part in your services, programs, or activities: forms, applications, current agendas and notices. The rule also has exceptions, and each one has conditions.
- Documents posted before your date. PDFs, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files that were on your site before your compliance date may be excepted, unless they are currently used to apply for, gain access to, or participate in your services, programs, or activities.
- Archived content. Excepted only when all four conditions hold: it was created before your compliance date (or reproduces paper documents or other media from before then); it is kept only for reference, research, or recordkeeping; it is not altered or updated after it is archived; and it is kept in an area clearly identified as an archive.
- A few others, such as some content posted by third parties, individualized password-protected documents, and social media posts made before your date, each with its own limits.
An exception does not end your duty to the person in front of you. If someone with a disability needs an excepted document, you still have to communicate with them as effectively as with anyone else, for example by providing an accessible version when asked.
Taking documents down is not a shortcut. Public records have retention and open-records requirements, and a document people use to reach a service still has to be available to them. Our audit sorts your documents so you can decide, with your records officer and your attorney, what to remediate first, what may fall under an exception, and what your own policies allow you to archive or retire.
What we do
We work on the documents, not your website software. Your web vendor keeps doing their job. We make what you post readable by everyone.
-
PDF remediation
We tag, order, and label existing PDFs so screen readers can read them in the right order. Scanned pages get real text.
-
Word, Excel, and PowerPoint
We fix the source files your staff use every day, so the next PDF starts out accessible, as long as later edits keep the structure and it is exported with tags. Check each new export before you post it.
-
Website document audit
We find the documents on your public site, test each one, and give you a prioritized list of what to fix first and what may fall under an exception, for you to decide with your records policies in mind.
-
Monthly retainer
New agendas and minutes every week? Send them to us and get them back accessible before they go live.
How it works
-
Inventory
We crawl your public website and list the PDF and Office documents it links to, with size, age, and where each is linked from.
-
Remediate
Software proposes the structure. People make it right. A person reviews the exact file we will deliver, listening with a screen reader where it matters, and that review is recorded.
-
Validate
Each PDF is checked with veraPDF, an open-source validator, against the PDF/UA-1 requirements a machine can verify. If it fails, it goes back to the desk. Automated checks cannot judge everything, which is why step 2 has a person in it.
-
Report
You get the fixed files plus a before-and-after report showing the automated results and the human review for each one. Keep it as your record of what was done. It is evidence of the work, not a legal certificate of compliance.
The Department of Justice has already acted in Texas
These are not hypotheticals. Each one is a public settlement with a Texas county, and posted documents were part of the problem.
-
Smith County
The Justice Department found the county's election website could not be used by people who rely on screen readers or a keyboard. Posted documents were not tagged. The county agreed to hire an independent auditor, meet WCAG 2.1 AA, train staff, and report unresolved barriers to the department.
-
Colorado, Runnels, and Upton Counties
Three small counties, each with a population well under 50,000, received the same findings and the same terms as Smith County. Size did not matter. The department reviewed the documents on the site and the menus that keyboard users could not open.
-
McLennan County
Under Project Civic Access, the county agreed to bring its whole website up to WCAG 2.0 AA within one year, name a web accessibility coordinator, hire an outside consultant, test with people with disabilities, and stay in compliance for three years, all at the county's expense.
Those cases came before the web rule had a deadline. From April 2027 for larger governments and April 2028 for smaller ones and special districts, the standard is written down.
Try us on five of your own documents
Send five PDFs from your website. We send them back remediated, with a before-and-after veraPDF report for each. No cost, no commitment. It is the fastest way to see what you would be getting.
Request a free sampleA Texas firm that does one thing
TaggedRight is a women-owned business based in Texas. We only do document remediation, so we are fast at it. Each PDF is checked with veraPDF against PDF/UA-1, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files go through our automated Office checks, and every file is reviewed by a person before it leaves our hands.