Common questions

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.

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.

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.

No. Docability works alongside your existing vendors. It focuses on making individual documents accessible, not on running your website.

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).

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.

Yes. If you tick “Skip review and create the PDF straight away” when uploading, the rebuilt PDF is created as soon as processing finishes. No one at your organization sees the image descriptions or other changes first, and anything Docability could not resolve on its own is left unresolved. Under our Terms of Service, you remain responsible for reviewing each rebuilt PDF before you publish it, and the correction commitment does not cover Flagged Items left unresolved.

Under the Department of Justice’s Title II rule, state and local governments, including special districts, must meet WCAG 2.1 AA for the web content they publish. Other laws apply to other organizations; our legislation page lists them with links to the sources.

Not necessarily. The Title II rule has an exception for some older PDFs posted before the compliance date that aren’t used to access services, but current documents, such as forms and applications, generally need to conform. Read the ADA.gov guidance or ask a lawyer, and start with the documents people use most.

Docability recognizes the text on scanned pages so it can be read aloud instead of treated as a picture. Review the result, as you would for any rebuilt PDF.

No. The information on this site is not legal advice. Ask a lawyer about your situation.