Why it matters
Every document. Every reader.
Accessibility is often described as a compliance task. It starts somewhere simpler: a person who needs a document from their school district or town, and whether they can read it.
Why this matters
Public documents are how people take part in public life
Enrolling a child. Reading an IEP notice. Following the budget at a school committee meeting. Applying for a permit. Finding the bus route. When the PDF behind any of these cannot be read with a screen reader, the person who needs it is quietly shut out, and usually never tells anyone.
More than 1 in 4
adults in the United States has a disability.
7.5 million
students, 15% of all public school students, received special education services in 2022–23.
5.5%
of adults in the United States have a vision disability: about 1 in 18.
Who accessible documents serve
- Residents who are blind or have low vision use screen readers and magnification, which need real text, headings and reading order to work.
- People with dyslexia, ADHD or other learning disabilities rely on clear structure and text-to-speech to follow a long policy or a form.
- Parents and grandparents reading a school notice on a phone with large text, often in a hurry.
- People who cannot use a mouse move through a document with a keyboard or voice control, so every field and link must be reachable.
- Families who speak another language at home translate documents with tools that only work when the text is real text, not a picture of it.
The law is the floor, not the reason
The Department of Justice's ADA Title II rule requires public entities to meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA, including in their documents (28 CFR § 35.200). That rule matters. But districts and towns that do this well do it because their residents and families depend on these documents every day.
Accessible documents are also simply better documents: they read well on a phone, work with translation tools, and can be searched.
What an inaccessible document blocks
A kindergarten registration form
A parent who is blind cannot tell which blank is for which answer, so they cannot enroll their child without asking for help.
A notice of procedural safeguards
A family cannot read their rights in special education, the very document written to protect them.
A school committee budget
A resident cannot follow the numbers being voted on at a public meeting.
A scanned bus schedule
To a screen reader the page is silent: there is no text in it at all.
How assistive technology reads a document
A document can look perfect on screen and still be unusable with a screen reader. What matters is underneath:
- 01Real text. A screen reader reads text aloud. A scanned page is a picture, so there is nothing to read unless the text is recognized and added.
- 02Tags and reading order. Tags tell assistive technology what each part is: a heading, a list, a table, a form field. Without them a document is one long, unordered stream of words.
- 03Descriptions of images. Charts, maps and photos need a short text description (alternative text), so the information is not lost to someone who cannot see them.
- 04Language and title. The document says what language it is in, so it is pronounced correctly, and has a real title instead of a file name.
- 05Contrast and size. Text needs enough contrast with its background, and must stay readable when someone zooms in.
These are the things the international standards check: WCAG 2.1 for content in general, and PDF/UA-1 for PDF files. What makes a PDF accessible.
Where to start
We will look at your website for free and show you which documents matter most, and which may not need fixing at all.