A client recently asked me what I thought about a new product named DocAccess that claims to “instantly make all of your website’s documents accessible.”
I had not heard of DocAccess before so I read through their sales page to get a better understanding of what was being offered. Here’s my first impression of the product / claims based on the sales page and the ADA Title II web rule.
| Approach | What It Means | Legal Status |
|---|---|---|
| Direct PDF Remediation | Making the original PDF document itself WCAG 2.1 AA conformant through proper tagging, structure, and accessibility features. | Fully compliant. This is the primary requirement under the ADA Title II web rule. |
| Alternative Version Only | Creating an accessible version while the original PDF non-conformant with WCAG 2.1 AA. | Non-compliant. The original PDF must still be WCAG 2.1 AA conformant regardless of alternatives. |
| Conforming Alternate Versions | Using alternative accessible versions instead of making the original content directly accessible. | Alternate versions only permitted when technical or legal limitations prevent WCAG 2.1 AA conformance. |
| Enhancement Tools | After PDF is WCAG 2.1 AA conformant, adding extra features for enhanced accessibility and usability. | Compliant and encouraged under § 35.203 as “equivalent facilitation” to exceed minimum requirements. |
Table of Contents
What is DocAccess?
DocAccess uses JavaScript to convert online PDFs into an “accessible transcript” of the content viewable inside a pop-up window that opens up. The transcript view is claimed to be WCAG 2.1 AA conformant.
Who is Doc Access Sold By?
DocAccess is sold by Streamline, a company whose target demographic is special districts. Special districts are covered by the ADA Title II web rule.
Features
Doc Access provides several nice features that complement accessing the PDFs:
- Ask a Question (about the PDF) using AI
- Document Outline
- Live Assistance 24/7 provided by Aira
- Translate into another language
While nice, these add-ons aren’t what the focus is for determining ADA compliance. The focus is on whether the documents meet the requirements explicitly stated in the ADA Title II web rule.
DocAccess Claims
Let’s look at the legal claims directly made on DocAccess.com. I’ll provide screenshots for effect and to preserve the language used.
Protect yourself from costly accessibility lawsuits
Accessibility lawsuits in the U.S. have surged in recent years. The most common culprit being an inaccessible document or PDF. Protect yourself from risk and avoid the headache of creating accessible documents or paying for costly remediations.
- No more struggling to create accessible documents
- No more costly PDF remediations
- No more worrying about expensive lawsuits
- No more excluding users from document access
Analysis: This is more of an implication than a claim with the implication being that using Doc Access will protect you from web accessibility lawsuits. Also, stating / indicating the most common culprit in general website accessibility litigation is PDFs is false. This can be proven empirically by looking through complaints filed in court.
It’s true that inaccessible PDFs are occasionally named in complaints, but these claims are infrequent.
That said, PDF accessibility is a very real concern under the ADA Title II web rule (much larger than Title III where the focus is more on website accessibility and/or less PDFs are involved) so this incorrect throw-in was completely unnecessary.
I would advise any client covered by Title II to make PDF accessibility a priority, but PDFs have not been the “most common culprit” in accessibility lawsuits, generally.
What accessibility standards does DocAccess follow?
DocAccess fully adheres to WCAG 2.1 AA guidelines, ensuring compliance with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the latest DOJ ruling 28 CFR Part 35, and the EU’s EN 301 549 accessibility requirements. We also comply with state-specific regulations across all 50 states, including California’s AB 434 and Unruh Act, as well as Colorado’s HB 21-1110.
Do I still need to remediate my PDFs?
No. Since DocAccess creates a fully compliant, accessible HTML transcript of your PDFs, this qualifies as an “alternative format” under ADA guidelines. Therefore, your original PDFs don’t require separate remediation. We have found that users with disabilities typically prefer this interactive format on the website itself, enabling quick navigation and immediate responses to their queries.
Analysis: The first answer intentionally or unintentionally has a very common characteristic in accessibility compliance claims: it skips a crucial step. WCAG 2.1 AA conformance is a best practice for ADA Title III compliance and is required under the ADA Title II web rule (cited to as 28 CFR Part 35), but the primary question is not whether the outputted PDF HTML transcription page is WCAG 2.1 AA conformant (which we don’t know that it is or will be), but whether the PDF itself is WCAG 2.1 AA conformant.
In the second answer, Doc Access bestows ADA compliance upon its transcript of the PDF based on its interpretation of the ADA and then goes so far as to say that the PDF itself doesn’t need to be remediated.
I was genuinely surprised to see them to explicitly state that you don’t need to remediate your PDFs. That’s extremely risky on their part for multiple reasons.
Also, we’ve seen this playbook before with website accessibility widgets where sellers outright claim and/or insinuate their widget would make your website ADA compliant. Hundreds of websites owners relied upon this claim and were nevertheless sued. Two separate class action lawsuits against the largest overlay widget sellers resulted (here’s a write-up on one of the overlay class actions). And the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ordered one widget vendor to pay $1 million dollars and prohibited it “from representing that its automated products can make any website compliant, or ensure continued compliance, with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).”
More on the riskiness of this one FAQ in a moment.
Let’s now look at a few excerpts from an embedded YouTube video on the DocAccess.com sales page:
0:04: Doc Access, a powerful new tool that makes your documents ADA compliant.
0:05: let’s take this PDF report on a website with Doc Access it’s enhanced in groundbreaking ways ensuring full legal and technical compliance
0:35: Complex documents become fully ADA compliant.
ADA Title II Web Rule
As we’ve seen with the immense success of web accessibility overlay widgets (despite hundreds of accessibility professionals warning against them), organizations fearful of lawsuits are quick to believe marketing and sales pitches that claim to instantly make digital assets accessible and ADA compliant.
But when it comes to lawsuit prevention, it’s not about what vendors claim, it’s about what regulatory authorities and plaintiffs’ lawyers think. Because it’s authorities who establish precedent and overwhelmingly plaintiffs’ lawyers who interpret and enforce the ADA through private litigation. And plaintiffs’ lawyers do not care what digital accessibility companies and vendors claim their products can do; plaintiffs’ lawyers have also been more than willing to sue over technicalities.
What’s nice about Title II (as opposed to Title III) is we have explicit technical requirements set for digital assets set out in the ADA Title II web rule and distilled in the DOJ’s Web Rule Fact Sheet.
The general rule is that web content — which includes documents — must be WCAG 2.1 AA conformant. So, obviously PDFs must be WCAG 2.1 AA conformant.
What does the Web Rule say about alternative versions of web content?
The final rule makes clear in § 35.202 the limited circumstances in which “conforming alternate versions” of web content, as defined in
WCAG 2.1, can be used as a means of achieving accessibility. As WCAG 2.1 defines it, a conforming alternate version is a separate version of web content that is accessible, up to date, contains the same information and functionality as the inaccessible web content, and can be reached in particular ways, such as through a conforming page or an accessibility-supported mechanism.
This initial language seems promising. DocAccess produces a separate, alternative HTML transcript of a PDF that’s viewable online. But let’s continue on.
However, the Department is concerned that WCAG 2.1 could be interpreted to permit a segregated approach and a worse experience for individuals with disabilities. The Department also understands that, in practice, it can be difficult to maintain conforming alternate versions because it is often challenging to keep two different versions of web content up to date. For these reasons, as discussed in the section-by-section analysis of § 35.202, conforming alternate versions are permissible only when it is not possible to make web content directly accessible due to technical or legal limitations.
That last sentence is bolded because it’s a killer. The only path to compliance for conforming alternate versions is due to technical or legal limitations.
For most active documents provided by state and local governments, there will be very few scenarios where a legal limitation to making a document accessible exists. And the same goes for technical limitations.
Neither of these two permissions for alternate conforming versions provides a gateway for the general use of only Doc Access HTML transcript versions of PDFs. Again, DocAccess is a classic example of a potentially conforming alternate version.
Here is the precise language from § 35.202 Conforming alternate versions.
(a) A public entity may use conforming alternate versions of web content, as defined by WCAG 2.1, to comply with § 35.200 only where it is not possible to make web content directly accessible due to technical or legal limitations.
Another relevant section is § 35.203 Equivalent facilitation:
Nothing in this subpart prevents the use of designs, methods, or techniques as alternatives to those prescribed, provided that the alternative designs, methods, or techniques result in substantially equivalent or greater accessibility and usability of the web content or mobile app.
This is where DocAccess and its features aligns the best with the Web Rule: nothing prevents you from using Doc Access and taking extra measures (e.g., language translation, search function) to make your web content (here, PDF documents) even more accessible or more usable. WCAG 2.1 AA just the minimum legal requirement, but the DOJ doesn’t want to limit state and local governments from adding in extras like DocAccess provides.
And this is where I see DocAccess potentially fitting in if its product works as it purports to: as an extra measure or enhancement.
Moreover, § 35.203 opens up the possibility of using any number of techniques or methods to reach WCAG 2.1 AA conformance (or go beyond WCAG 2.1 AA) for your web content. So it doesn’t matter how you meet the requirement, but the requirement remains: you have to make your web content WCAG 2.1 AA conformant.
The ADA Title II web rule is very clear:
- your non-excepted web content (including PDFs) must be WCAG 2.1 AA conformant
- use of alternate conforming versions is permissible only when it is not possible to make web content directly accessible due to technical or legal limitations.
Given the above, plaintiffs’ lawyers have a very clear legal path to victory despite the use of DocAccess. And unlike web accessibility claims made under the general language of Title III of the ADA, it’s literally set in the Code of Federal Regulations.
ADA Title III
Let’s look at some more general language from Title III of the ADA (which applies to private entities):
Sec. 12182. Prohibition of discrimination by public accommodations
(b) Construction (1) General Prohibition (A) Activities (iii) Separate benefit
It shall be discriminatory to provide an individual or class of individuals, on the basis of a disability or disabilities of such individual or class, directly, or through contractual, licensing, or other arrangements with a good, service, facility, privilege, advantage, or accommodation that is different or separate from that provided to other individuals, unless such action is necessary to provide the individual or class of individuals with a good, service, facility, privilege, advantage, or accommodation, or other opportunity that is as effective as that provided to others.
(b) Construction (2) Specific Prohibitions (A) Discrimination (v) Discrimination includes
where an entity can demonstrate that the removal of a barrier under clause (iv) is not readily achievable, a failure to make such goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, or accommodations available through alternative methods if such methods are readily achievable.
Surprising Claims
The clarity provided by the ADA Title II web rule is what makes the DocAccess claims so surprising.
The alternate transcript page produced by DocAccess may (emphasis may) be WCAG 2.1 AA conformant, but that doesn’t make the original PDF document WCAG 2.1 AA conformant and that’s very clearly the requirement under the rule.
For you to not only claim your product provides for ADA compliance, but then go so far as to outright state potential buyers don’t need to remediate their original PDFs is risky.
Conclusion
I actually think there’s some technical merit to this product (unlike overlay widgets), but sellers who make claims of ADA compliance or compliance with other laws need to establish a logical, fundamental basis for their claims.
State and local governments and others with online PDFs will rely on these claims.
If DocAccess could demonstrate, step-by-step, that they remediate the PDF itself to be WCAG 2.1 AA conformant, then a compliance claim makes sense. But, admittedly, they don’t make the original PDF WCAG 2.1 AA conformant.
Instead, DocAccess fits much better under § 35.203 Equivalent facilitation as the Web Rule doesn’t prevent covered entities from enhancing user experience.
My recommendation to clients will continue to be to fully remediate their PDFs to meet WCAG 2.1 AA and PDF/UA standards. If they want to go beyond remediation to also offer Doc Access alternate transcripts, I think the additional features could potentially be a very nice enhancement for usability.
Even if DocAccess where to make perfectly WCAG 2.1 AA conformant transcripts (which I don’t know that it actually does), relying solely on DocAccess for PDF remediation is assuming noteworthy risk when you could except as many documents as possible and remediate the essentials.
