Imagine you work for a state government agency. Over the years, your department has diligently published reports, meeting minutes, forms, budget documents, and countless other materials as PDFs. A quick inventory shows thousands of them – some from last week, others dating back more than a decade. At the time they were created, nobody thought much about accessibility. The priority was getting information online quickly. Fast forward to today, with a looming deadline to comply to new requirements around Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and suddenly those PDFs feel less like a public service and more like a compliance headache. The natural question is: what now? Do you fix all those PDFs, even the dusty ones from 2009? Do you shove them into an archive and hope for the best? Or do you quietly start deleting?
Title II requires state and local governments to ensure “effective communication” for people with disabilities. That mandate doesn’t distinguish between a form in HTML or a form in PDF; if a member of the public needs it to participate in a government program or service, it must be accessible. In practice, the DOJ has consistently leaned on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) as the measuring stick for digital accessibility. The new rule makes this explicit by tying compliance to WCAG 2.1 AA.
But what about those thousands of PDFs? The DOJ has provided an important distinction between documents that are part of current services and those that are purely historical. If a PDF is actively use, like in a current building permit application, the 2024 fiscal budget, or the latest transit schedule, it must be remediated for accessibility. The age of the file is irrelevant. A permit form created in 2012 but still offered as the official way to apply for a permit must be accessible today, regardless of how inaccessible the original file may be.
On the other hand, PDFs that are maintained solely for reference or recordkeeping can be treated differently. This is where the concept of “archived web content” comes into play. Under DOJ’s rule and in past settlement agreements, archived content is defined narrowly: it must have been created before the compliance date, retained exclusively for reference, not altered after archiving, and clearly stored in a section of the website identified as an archive. Think of old city council minutes or a 1999 annual report. If these documents are tucked away in a clearly labeled archive and not used to participate in government services, they do not need to be remediated proactively. However, Title II’s effective communication requirement still applies. That means if someone requests access to an archived PDF, the agency must be able to provide the information in an accessible format in a timely manner.
Then there are the gray areas. One example could be something like an old policy manual from 2010 that is still referenced occasionally in public hearings. If the manual is cited as a basis for decision-making, the agency can’t just say it is “archived”. DOJ enforcement has shown little patience for labeling something “archived” if it still functions as part of a program or service. Agencies that try to stretch the definition risk being forced into remediation under a consent decree.
This leads to the strategic decision point: fix, archive, or delete. Fixing means allocating budget for PDF remediation. Doing so can be resource-intensive, but for documents the public must use, it’s non-negotiable. Archiving is a safe and legally defensible route for documents that are truly historical. But archiving isn’t just a matter of dragging files into a folder called “old stuff”. The archive must be segregated, labeled, and preserved without modification, with a clear process in place for handling accommodation requests. Deletion is sometimes the best choice of all. Many government sites contain redundant or outdated PDFs that serve no real purpose. Removing them reduces clutter for the public and lowers compliance exposure.
For our hypothetical state agency with thousands of PDFs, the smartest approach is triage. First, identify all documents that are essential for current services, such as forms, applications, schedules, notices, and policies. Those must be remediated as quickly as possible. Second, review older materials and decide whether they are still functionally relevant. If not, either move them into a clearly defined archive or remove them altogether. Finally, build new policies so that every PDF created going forward is born accessible. That means training staff, setting up templates, and integrating accessibility checks into the publishing workflow.
The bottom line is this: ADA Title II compliance doesn’t care when a PDF was created. What matters is whether the public relies on it to access government services today. Age is no shield. By distinguishing between active, archived, and obsolete content, government agencies can create a roadmap that balances compliance risk with practical realities. Fix what people use, archive what’s only historical, and delete what no one needs.
