Compliance guidance for public agencies
Practical, deadline-driven articles on ADA Title II, WCAG 2.1, archive exemptions, and PDF accessibility — plus records retention, document scanning, and public records response for agencies working out what they actually hold.
PDF/UA Compliance: What the Standard Requires, and What Actually Fails
ISO 14289-1 in practical terms — the Matterhorn Protocol, the clause failures you'll actually see, and measured data from 74,163 pages of real government PDFs.
ADA Title II for California Public Agencies: What's Required by April 26, 2027
Plain-English breakdown of who's covered, what must comply, and a realistic 12-month rollout plan California agencies can actually follow.
The DOJ Extended the ADA Deadline. Here's What Didn't Change.
RIN 1190-AA82 moved both compliance dates by one year. Private-lawsuit exposure, California's Unruh Act, and WCAG 2.1 AA are unchanged.
Archive-Exempt Content Under ADA Title II: What Qualifies, What Doesn't
The archive exception can shave 20–40% off your remediation workload — if you use it correctly. Most agencies use it wrong.
WCAG 2.1 AA for Government PDFs: A Practical Checklist
The 14 success criteria most government PDFs fail, with plain-English explanations and concrete fixes for each.
PDF vs. HTML for ADA Compliance: Which Should Public Agencies Choose?
Both can meet WCAG 2.1 AA. But cost, ongoing burden, and user experience are dramatically different. How to decide for each document.
Section 508 vs. WCAG 2.1 vs. ADA Title II: A Plain-English Comparison
Three accessibility standards, three different scopes, almost the same technical requirements. Which one applies to you and what to cite.
How Many PDFs Does Your City Have? Estimating Your ADA Remediation Scope
Almost every agency we've worked with underestimated their corpus by 5–10x. Real numbers from California agencies and methods to size your own.
How to Inventory Every Document Your Agency Owns (Before You Archive Anything)
The seven places government documents actually live, the nine fields worth recording, and how to run the count in three passes.
Records Retention Schedules for California Cities and Special Districts
What the schedule contains, what the Government Code requires before destruction, and how to apply retention to files that live on your website.
What to Scan First: Prioritizing a Government Digitization Backlog
A four-factor scoring model for sequencing a scanning program — and the five categories of records you should not scan at all.
Running a Backfile Scanning Project: Specs, Vendors, and Quality Control
Image specifications by material type, in-house versus outsourced, a sampling plan with teeth, and what to require in the deliverable.
Is Your OCR Good Enough? Testing Scanned PDFs Before They Go on the Website
Why 98% character accuracy is worse than it sounds, what wrecks recognition, and a ten-minute sampling protocol for checking vendor output.
Answering CPRA Requests Faster: What a Document Index Buys You
Search and review consume most of a records response. One of them can be fixed with infrastructure — here is what that looks like.
Before You Publish the Archive: Finding PII in 40 Years of Documents
Where personal information hides in historic records, why a black rectangle is not redaction, and how to verify a file is actually clean.
Agenda and Minutes Archives: Brown Act Posting, Retention, and Accessibility
Three obligations land on the same files, on a 72-hour clock that repeats forever. How to build a meeting-document pipeline that keeps up.
File Naming and Metadata Standards for Government Document Archives
A convention that survives 200,000 files, the four PDF metadata fields that matter, and how to rename an archive without breaking links.
Budgeting a Scanning and Remediation Project for Next Fiscal Year
Unit cost drivers, the three levers that cut scope before you quote, three-year phasing, and what belongs in the staff report.
Start with a free corpus audit
We'll count every public document on your website, classify archive-exempt content, identify duplicates, and deliver a prioritized remediation plan in 5 business days. California public agencies only.