Public PDFs, made accessible.
Docability rebuilds the agendas, budgets and reports you publish into tagged PDFs that screen readers can follow, with a report of every change.
Designed for WCAG 2.1 AA, PDF/UA-1 and Section 508
An animation of a sample water quality report from a fictional district, the Cedar Hollow Water District, being rebuilt. Docability scans the page and finds four problems: the page is untagged, a chart has no description, a table has no header cells, and a footnote is too faint. It then tags the headings and text, writes a description of the chart, marks the table headers, darkens the footnote and sets the reading order. The report's score rises from 31% to 96%.
Sample document
Made for the documents you already publish
- Board agendasNumbered items, read in order
- Annual budgetsEvery figure read with its row and column
- Water quality reportsCharts described in words
- Meeting minutesHeadings to jump between
- Council packetsScanned pages read aloud
- Public noticesA title and language set
- Capital improvement plansTables that run across pages
- Rate studiesGraphs and maps described
- Permit applicationsFields people can reach by keyboard
- Audit reportsA real outline, not just big text
- Course syllabiLists and links that work
- Grant reportsText in the order it was written
WCAG 2.1 AA deadlines are approaching
The Department of Justice’s ADA Title II rule requires the documents that public entities publish online, including PDFs, to meet WCAG 2.1 AA standards.
April 26, 2027
State and local governments serving 50,000 people or more
April 26, 2028
Smaller governments and every special district, regardless of size
PDF remediation in four steps, no tagging by hand
Upload your PDF
Drop in a PDF of up to 90 MB and 1000 pages. Scanned documents work, too.
We rebuild it
Docability reads the layout, then rebuilds the document with headings, a logical reading order, table structure, and image descriptions.
Review the report
See the issues identified in your document and the changes made. Review the rebuilt PDF before publishing it.
Download the result
Download your tagged PDF and a report of what we found in your original document and what changed.
Built for PDF/UA-1 and accessibility standards
Docability strives to meet WCAG 2.1 AA in every rebuilt PDF and will correct any that fall short, as our Terms of Service describe. We do not certify legal compliance, so review each result before publishing.
- ADA Title II
- WCAG 2.1 AA
- PDF/UA-1
- Section 508
Read about the standardsRead about the legislation
What Docability checks
Headings
Heading tags follow a sensible order so people can jump between sections.
Reading order
Content is read in the intended order, not the order in which it was drawn.
Tables
Header cells are marked as headers so each value is read with its row and column.
Images
Images are described or marked as decorative so screen readers skip them.
Title and language
A document title identifies the file, and a language setting helps screen readers pronounce its text correctly.
Scanned pages
Text on scanned pages is recognized so it can be read aloud rather than treated as a picture.
Your report shows what we found and what changed.
Who Docability is for
Special districts
Agendas, meeting minutes, and budgets, past and present.
Education
Course materials every student can use.
Local government
Council packets, permits, and public notices for every resident.
Nonprofits
Grant applications, reports, and public materials.
Utilities
Rate notices, service updates, and water quality reports.
Businesses
Annual reports, product guides, and anything else you publish.
Short-lived files. Controlled access.
Access is limited to your organization and any manager you work through, and files are deleted on a defined schedule.
- Uploaded
- Waiting for your review (up to 3 days)
- Rebuilt PDF created
- Deleted 24 hours after the rebuilt PDF is created
- In production, document-processing services are not directly exposed to the public internet.
- A document waiting for your review is kept for up to 3 days. Your original PDF, rebuilt PDF, and report are deleted 24 hours after the rebuilt PDF is created.
- To check and improve image descriptions and suggest layout changes, each page’s images and text are sent to Anthropic’s AI service. Anthropic does not train on them and currently deletes them within 30 days (up to 2 years if flagged), outside our deletion schedule.
- Each organization’s documents are kept apart. Only your own team can see them, along with the manager you work through, if you use one, such as a district manager or web developer. Docability staff access documents only as our Privacy Policy allows.
- Production web access uses HTTPS, and every account can enable two-factor sign-in.
Common questions about PDF accessibility
Something we haven’t covered? [email protected]
How long does PDF remediation take?
Most documents take a few minutes to process. Long or scanned documents take longer, and you can watch each document’s progress as it is processed.
Does Docability make my PDFs ADA compliant?
Docability does not certify legal compliance or guarantee that your website or organization meets the ADA or any other law. Docability strives to produce rebuilt PDFs that meet WCAG 2.1 AA, but it does not guarantee that every file will fully conform. If one falls short, report it within 30 days of downloading it and we will correct it at no cost, or refund the affected pages if it cannot be corrected, as set out in Section 7.1 of our Terms of Service. The report describes the issues identified and changes made. Review each rebuilt PDF before publishing it.
Do you use AI?
Yes. Software we run on our own servers drafts a description of each image. To check and improve those descriptions and suggest layout and structure changes, Docability then sends each page’s images and text to Anthropic, the provider of the Claude AI models, through its commercial API. Anthropic’s commercial terms do not allow it to train its models on our data, and it currently deletes what it receives within 30 days, or keeps it up to 2 years if its safety systems flag a request, which is separate from our deletion schedule. We do not send documents to any other outside AI service. Our software checks every suggested change before applying it, and when you review a document you can see and edit each image description before approving it. Section 3.1 of our Privacy Policy has the details.
Does this replace our IT or website vendor?
No. Docability works alongside your existing vendors. It focuses on making individual documents accessible, not on running your website.
What is the ADA Title II deadline for PDFs?
Under the Department of Justice’s Title II rule, public entities must meet WCAG 2.1 AA standards by April 26, 2027 (populations of 50,000 or more) or April 26, 2028 (populations under 50,000, including all special districts regardless of size).
Where are our documents stored?
Documents are stored in the service’s document-processing environment while they are being processed and until they are deleted under the retention schedule. A document waiting for your review is kept for up to 3 days, and your original PDF, rebuilt PDF, and report are deleted 24 hours after the rebuilt PDF is created. Page images and text sent to Anthropic for image descriptions and layout suggestions are held by Anthropic, which currently deletes them within 30 days or keeps them up to 2 years if flagged, not on this schedule. We retain page counts, issue counts, and processing times, but not the documents themselves.
Ready to make your documents accessible?
Tell us about your documents and we’ll show you how Docability works for your organization.