Local government sites communicate almost everything through PDFs: permits, budgets, meeting packets, public notices, and applications. Those files tend to pile up across departments, pages, and years of updates, which makes it hard to know how many you have or what shape they're in. Level Five reviews and remediates your public-facing PDFs for WCAG 2.1 Level AA readiness.
What is WCAG 2.1 Level AA?
WCAG stands for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. It's the technical standard used to measure whether digital content is accessible to people with disabilities. Level AA is the specific level the DOJ's rule points to.
Link: https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG21/
How Level Five Helps
Find the PDFs
We crawl your public-facing website and catalog every PDF we find, including the ones buried a few clicks deep. We also flag documents that are no longer in use, so you're not paying to fix files nobody needs anymore.
Organize by Type & Effort
We group the files by document type, such as forms, reports, notices, and agendas, then estimate the effort each group will take. That lets us prioritize the documents your residents actually use.
Assess Remediation Needs
We review the accessibility issues in each document, sort out which ones need light fixes versus heavier rebuilds, and note anywhere we'd need your original source file.
Provide a Quote
You get transparent pricing based on the actual scope, a realistic timeframe, and no obligation to move forward.
Remediate the PDFs
We fix tagging, reading order, and alt text, test each file against WCAG 2.1 AA success criteria, and deliver finished documents that are ready to publish.
The deadline is coming
The DOJ's ADA Title II rule requires state and local government websites and mobile apps to meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA. That covers public-facing digital content, which usually includes the PDFs you use for forms, reports, notices, policies, applications, meeting materials, and other public information.
Which deadline applies to you:
April 26, 2027: state and local government entities with a population of 50,000 or more
April 26, 2028: state and local government entities with a population under 50,000
April 26, 2028: special district governments
This page is for general information and is not legal advice.
Waiting can create more work later
One point is easy to miss: Title II already requires state and local governments to make their digital content accessible. That obligation is in effect right now. The deadline just marks when WCAG 2.1 AA becomes the specific, measurable standard used to judge whether you're meeting it.
In the meantime, inaccessible documents make it harder for residents with disabilities to get public information, complete forms, understand notices, and take part in the services those documents support.
Entities that fall behind tend to run into the same few things: complaints or inquiries from the DOJ, occasional lawsuits from residents, and most often, having to remediate everything anyway. That work just happens later, under more time pressure, and sometimes as part of a formal agreement with its own reporting requirements.
None of this is meant to alarm you. It's simply why we suggest starting the review now. Working through your PDFs on your own timeline is almost always easier than working through them on someone else's.
Let's find out what you're working with
Use the Request a PDF Accessibility Review box at the top right of this page, and we'll look at your website, identify the public-facing PDFs that may need remediation, and send you a quote for next steps.