For most local councils, meeting accessibility requirements isn’t a one-off task. Under the Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations (PSBAR), digital content (including PDFs) needs to be accessible to all users. But while the regulation is clear, the reality of meeting it isn’t always straightforward. With the Government Digital Service (GDS) actively auditing websites, and councils given just 12 weeks to address issues before a re-test, the pressure to act is increasing.
In one UK council assessment, over 2,100 PDFs were identified as non-compliant; equating to more than 850 working days and approximately £83,000 in staff time to remediate.
Why manual PDF remediation is difficult to scale
PDFs are embedded in how councils communicate. They’re used for everything from:
- Application and housing forms
- Planning documents and reports
- Council meeting minutes and agendas
- Policies, strategies, and guidance documents
Many of these documents were never created with accessibility in mind, leaving teams with a large backlog to review and fix. While remediation sounds straightforward, the time and resource required quickly adds up, especially alongside day-to-day responsibilities.
Scan your website to locate every PDF in one place and instantly see how many do not meet accessibility standards. You will also receive one of your website’s PDFs fully remediated, so you can see the impact in action.
Why councils can’t scale with manual remediation alone
Reviewing and fixing every document is rarely realistic. As we’ve seen, even a single council can face thousands of non-compliant PDFs, turning remediation into months or even years of work.
Meanwhile, residents still need access to information today, often leading to frustration, increased support enquiries, and added pressure on internal teams.
Accessibility is now an operational challenge for UK councils
Most councils are facing the same challenge: legacy content, limited resources, and growing expectations. With GDS audits adding clear timelines for improvement, accessibility is no longer just a compliance task, it’s an operational one.
The focus now is on making progress in a way that’s practical, sustainable, and delivers impact where it matters most.
A faster way to remediate PDFs at scale
For councils dealing with large volumes of documents, manual remediation isn’t always practical. The Recite Me PDF Accessibility Checker scans your website to identify PDFs, runs them through WCAG compliance checks, and highlights common barriers such as missing alt text or incorrect reading order.
Rather than reviewing documents individually, teams can quickly fix at scale, making it much faster to improve accessibility without adding to existing workloads.
If you’d like to explore how accessibility technology can support your website visitors, get in touch with the Recite Me team to find out more.
PDF accessibility for UK councils FAQs
Looking for a recap or quick summary? Here are a few of our most frequently asked questions to help you get to grips with the essentials:
What are the Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations?
The Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations set requirements for UK public sector organisations to ensure their digital content is accessible. This includes various documents, including PDFs, ensuring readers can access information and services online.
Why are PDFs a common accessibility issue for councils?
PDFs are widely used across council services, from forms and reports to policies and meeting documents. Many of these files fail to implement best practices, creating accessibility issues for content structure, reading order, and document tagging.
What happens if a UK council website doesn’t meet PDF accessibility requirements?
The Government Digital Service carries out audits of public sector websites. If issues are identified, councils are typically given 12 weeks to make improvements before a follow-up review.
Do all PDFs on a council website need to be accessible?
Yes, under PSBAR, published documents should be accessible unless they meet specific exemptions.
Where should councils start with improving PDF accessibility?
A practical starting point is to understand the scale of the issue by auditing existing content. To do this, you can use the Recite Me PDF accessibility checker to run a free scan of your website’s PDFs.
