3 Steps for Site Owners - Making your digital documents accessible

Siteimprove scans are automatic and cannot fully check the accessibility of your documents. Like websites, a manual review is required. 

Step 0: Stop adding inaccessible documents to your website. 

Make sure new documents on your site are accessible. If any new PDFs or digital documents are added to your website, ensure that they are WCAG 2.0 AA compliant.

Please see our training resources that will walk you through the steps of ensuring your digital documents are accessible. If you have any questions, please contact us at: improving-accessibility@berkeley.edu

Step 1: Perform a document audit of your website.

You will need to know what documents are on your site and where they are located. This information can be found in Siteimprove.

From Siteimprove

  1. Navigate to your website’s dashboard.

  2. Select Quality Assurance in the left navigation.

  3. Select Inventory.

  4. Select Documents.

  5. Select All Documents.

This site will walk you through all of the PDFs on your webpage. You will find important information like the title of your document, its URL, the last date it was modified, if it has PDF tags, and the number of times the document has been accessed in the past 30 days. 

Download a CSV file of this report 

  1. Select Export. 

  2. Under Download Excel File, select Main (Table).

  3. Select All Rows.

  4. Your file will automatically download. 

Reminder: Siteimprove scans are automated and may not find all documents that are available on your website. You are ultimately responsible for knowing what documents are available. 

Step 2: Build and share with DAP a remediation plan.

Your top priority should be to address the accessibility of anything that is needed to engage with your program area.

This may include sign up forms, sheets, or informational bulletins. How often your file is accessed, how critical the information is for the public to engage with, and how easily the file can be made accessible should also be considered when prioritizing documents for remediation. 

Ask yourself a few questions about each file:

  • Is this content still relevant and up-to-date?

  • Is this content available somewhere else on the site?

  • Can this content be a PDF alternative, like a web page or a Google Doc? 

  • Do I know who owns this content and how to contact them?

  • Does this content need to be publically available?

After answering these questions, you will have a more clear understanding of how you would like to move forward with remediation efforts. 

Step 3: Remove, convert, or remediate your digital documents. 

Ensure all documents that users need to engage with your program area are addressed first. If a document is needed to gain information, engage with, or participate in your program area, it should be the highest priority for remediation efforts.

If you decide to REMOVE or ARCHIVE a file, you may decide to:

  • Delete outdated or no longer relevant content. 

  • Archive content that you need to keep, but is not needed to access or interact with your program area. Archieved content is not required to be remediated. 

IMPORTANT: Archived content has specific conditions the MUST be met.

IMPORTANT: To archive content, you MUST create a sub-directory on your site called "archive" and store all of your archived documents in that sub-directory. If you alter or update an archived document, it can no longer remain in the archive sub-directory and MUST be made fully accessible.

The Department of Justice requires archived digital documents to meet four conditions:

  1. The document was created before April 24, 2026 AND

  2. The document is kept only for reference, research, or recordkeeping, AND

  3. The document is kept in a special area for archived content, AND

  4. The document has not been changed since it was archived.

A document must meet all four requirements to be exempt from remediation. If any condition is not met, the content must be made fully accessible. 

If a document is required to access your program area, it cannot be exempt from remediation. 

If someone requests an archived content be made accessible, it must be remediated promptly.

If you decide to RECREATE a file, you may decide to:

If you decide to REMEDIATE a file, you may decide to:

Continue to work on backlogged content until all digital documents have been addressed. We recommend focusing on documents that have a higher number of views, have been modified more recently, and are less complex. 

 If you need additional support or would like to schedule a consultation to walk through these steps with a DAP team member, please email: improving-accessibility@berkeley.edu.