We read a recent article on how a man filed a lawsuit against retail store claiming the store’s website is not ADA compliant. The man is blind and utilizes a scanner to read the text to him.

How can you tell if your document or website is an issue? If you can’t highlight the text of a website or document (like a PDF), it is likely the scanner can’t pick up the text.

We have noticed this issue when we are reading agendas and minutes published online by local governments.

West Conshohocken and Plymouth Township share their agendas and minutes via PDF’s that are not highlightable or searchable. They are basically saved as an image. Note that Plymouth’s aren’t always like this, but they are a lot of the time. Here are examples:

Plymouth Township 08/12/19 agenda
West Conshohocken 08/13/19 agenda

Whitemarsh Township saves their documents the correct way. You can view an example here.

The Department of Health & Human Services has a section of its website dedicated to teaching how to make files accessible.

Please note, that overall its a very complicated process to become absolutely compliant. There are likely issues with MoreThanTheCurve.com. However, switching how you save a PDF is an easy fix.