Which of your PDFs are actually exempt
Most agencies look at a folder of two hundred documents and assume all two hundred have to be remediated. They usually don't. Sorting them correctly is the single biggest lever on what this costs you.
Start with the number that scares everyone
The DOJ's regulatory analysis estimates that a small municipality has around 229 PDFs on its website, and puts the initial remediation cost at roughly $6,646. A small school district lands in the same range.
That figure assumes you remediate the whole backlog. In most cases you don't have to, and the rule says so.
The exception, in one sentence
Electronic documents that were already on your website before your compliance date are exempt — unless they are currently used to apply for, access, or participate in a service, program or activity.
Everything below is a consequence of that sentence.
Sorting your documents
Almost certainly exempt
- Meeting minutes from past years
- Agendas for meetings that already happened
- Public notices whose event or comment period has passed
- Old newsletters and annual reports
- Historical budget documents no longer in force
- Studies, plans and consultant reports kept for reference
These are records of things that happened. Nobody uses them to obtain a service, so the exception applies — as long as you don't edit and repost them, which restarts the clock.
Never exempt, no matter how old
- Any fillable or printable form — permits, licenses, applications, registrations, claims, appeals, requests
- Instructions for completing those forms
- Fee schedules a resident consults to complete a transaction
- Current codes and ordinances people must read to comply
- Eligibility criteria for a program or benefit
- Anything you link from a page that says "apply here" or "how to"
The test that resolves most arguments
Ask: if a blind resident could not read this document, could they still get the service?
If the answer is no — they could not apply, could not know the requirements, could not complete the step — the document is required, regardless of when it was posted. If the answer is yes, because the document is only a record of something past, the exception likely applies.
The genuinely ambiguous middle
Some documents sit between the two, and reasonable people disagree:
- A current-year budget: a record, but also a document residents consult during a public comment period
- A zoning map: reference material, but essential to a permit application
- Meeting agendas for upcoming meetings, which residents use to decide whether to attend and participate
Our advice on these is unglamorous: fix them. They tend to be few, they are the ones most likely to draw a complaint, and the cost of arguing about a document is usually higher than the cost of tagging it.
What this typically does to the number
In the sites we have scanned, a small municipality's mix runs roughly like this: two thirds minutes, agendas and notices; a quarter reports, plans and reference material; and somewhere between five and fifteen percent forms and instructions.
Applied to the DOJ's 229-document average, that puts the genuinely required set closer to twenty to forty documents — not two hundred. At typical per-page rates, that is a few hundred dollars of work rather than several thousand.
Two conditions, and they matter
The exception applies to what is already posted, not to what comes next. Every document you publish after your compliance date is covered, with no exception. That ongoing flow — twenty to fifty documents a month for a typical small city — is the part that never stops.
Editing an exempt document ends its exemption. If you open an old form, change the fee and repost it, it is now new content and must be accessible.
Write down your reasoning
Whatever you decide, keep a dated record of it: the document, the date it was posted, the classification you gave it, and why. If a complaint arrives two years from now, the difference between "we assessed our documents and applied the exception on this basis" and "we didn't get to it" is substantial — not because the record is a defense on its own, but because it demonstrates you took the obligation seriously.
See where your own documents stand
Enter your website and we'll inventory every PDF on it — how many fail, how many pages, and which ones are forms. Free, no signup.
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