The website is the part everybody looks at, and the documents hanging off it are where the duty is most often missed: the price list, the application form, the annual report, the slide deck attached to a news post. Document accessibility is the same standard applied to files rather than pages, and it is usually bought as a service because the tooling is unfamiliar. This page is what the duty covers, how ADA document remediation is scoped and priced, and how to stop the library growing faster than it is fixed.
What counts as a document here
Anything a visitor can download and read: PDFs, word processor files, spreadsheets, slide decks. Each format has its own accessibility features and its own checker, and each one has the same three failures: no structure, no alternative text, no table headers. A spreadsheet adds a fourth, which is that a sheet full of merged cells cannot be read in a sensible order at all.
How document remediation is scoped
By count and complexity, not by page count alone. Sort the library into born-digital simple, born-digital complex and scanned, then price the three groups separately; a supplier quoting one rate across all three is either padding the simple files or will renegotiate on the scanned ones. On the worked example three issues a document is a starting estimate, not a quote.
Stopping the library from growing
Every remediation programme that runs once is undone within a year by the next hundred uploads. Put the check in the authoring step: a template with styles that map to real headings, an export setting that keeps the tags, and a rule that nothing is published without its checker run. That is cheaper than any service and it is the only part that lasts.
Questions people ask about document accessibility
Are Word and PowerPoint files covered too?
Yes, if you publish them. The same failures apply, and both applications have a built-in checker that catches most of them at authoring time.
What about documents behind a login?
Same duty. A logged-in area is not exempt, and it is usually where the forms people must complete actually live.
Can we just convert everything to HTML?
For anything meant to be read, yes, and it is usually cheaper. Keep files for what has to be printed, signed or filed.