Digital Accessibility and PDF Remediation Playbook

A week before the deadline, the Department of Justice extended the digital accessibility compliance timeline by one year. For many state and local government entities, this extension offers something invaluable: time.

Across the country, jurisdictions had been racing to remediate large backlogs of websites and documents in an effort to meet the original deadline. Now, with additional time, public agencies have an opportunity to step back, evaluate their options, and make informed decisions about how best to meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1, Level AA).

To support that decision-making, archSCAN, LLC has developed the Digital Accessibility and PDF Remediation Playbook, a practical guide to help jurisdictions determine how to move forward with PDF remediation.

For nearly 30 years, government institutions have relied on PDF documents to share information with the public. PDFs are easy to create, familiar to users, and widely used for forms, public notices, legal documents, reports, historical records, and other essential information. As a result, many agencies now have thousands of PDF files in their digital archives.

The challenge is that many PDFs are not accessible by default. To be read properly by a screen reader, a PDF must be tagged correctly. Until recently, that process was expensive, time-consuming, and typically required professional remediation staff.

That is changing.

Automated PDF remediation tools, such as Accessibility On-Demand, now make it possible to tag PDF files without human intervention. In fact, we encourage you to review the tag tree in the Digital Accessibility and PDF Remediation Playbook itself. It was tagged 100% automatically, with no manual remediation required.

This technology gives public institutions a practical path forward. Agencies can remediate documents quickly before posting them, continue serving the public while new accessibility processes are developed, and begin addressing large backlogs without overwhelming staff or budgets.

The DOJ’s extension is a gift of time. The right technology can help jurisdictions use that time wisely.

To learn more about archSCAN’s remediation services, please visit our website and explore our Accessibility Services.

https://archscan.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Digital-Accessibility-and-PDF-Remediation-Playbook_AOD.pdf