Sedgwick County warns April 24 web-accessibility deadline will force some PDFs offline

Scott Wagner, the county chief information officer, told the Sedgwick County Commission that federal rules requiring accessible digital content will take effect for larger governments on April 24 and carry enforcement risk: "non-compliance is real. Uh 75K fines," he said.

That deadline, Wagner said, is focused first on larger government entities and covers websites and electronic documents, including PDFs—which staff described as "inherently not ... compliant" unless remediated. Adrian Clark, assistant county counselor, added that "as the law is written, it applies to everyone," but that this rollout targets larger units of government and that the county is concentrating on public-facing platforms.

Why it matters: many department web pages and public-facing guidance use PDFs. County staff said the content-management model—where departments own content but IT manages the technical platform—creates a cross-department effort to fix or replace documents so they can be read by assistive technologies.

What the county is doing: Wagner described a three-step workflow of categorization, remediation and validation. Communications and IT have trained more than 100 web editors across about 45 departments, created a cross-functional leadership team, and provided tools to convert or validate documents. Staff said they use Adobe Acrobat Pro to scan and flag accessibility issues and also test documents with common screen readers as part of quality assurance.

Legal and operational limits: Clark outlined a set of narrow exceptions for pre-existing or archived documents and emphasized staff are reviewing exceptions to reduce remediation work where permitted. The county distributed a color-coded flowchart for web editors showing when to remediate, archive or delete documents; staff explained the concept of "null" documents—files that remain in storage but are not linked to live content and may be archived or removed.

Potential short-term impact: Wagner warned that content deemed non-compliant may need to be taken offline until it can be fixed, a measure the county is trying to minimize as it completes remediation. Commissioners asked whether the rule is national in scope and how compliance is measured; staff pointed to WCAG-based guidance and described the department-level training and tooling being deployed.

What's next: county staff said the cross-functional team will continue working through outstanding items, provide guidance to web editors, and coordinate with departments that rely heavily on PDFs to mitigate service disruption. There was no formal vote; staff will report back with progress and any necessary operational impacts.