Cole County staff report progress on ADA document remediation, warn of tough-to-convert files

County staff provided an update April 7 on efforts to make county documents ADA-compliant ahead of a compliance deadline.

The records lead said they have remediated 19 documents from their desk so far and are meeting with departments to prioritize additional files. Staff reported that some documents are straightforward to remediate while others — such as scanned PDFs, files with mixed or missing fonts and complex table layouts — are time-consuming and may require outsourcing. The county has a remediation tool referred to as “prep” and that vendor offers an outsourcing option for particularly challenging files.

Staff said training on the remediation tool is scheduled and that they are prioritizing documents by access frequency (keeping frequently accessed agendas and audits available while working on remediation). External auditors (Williams Keepers) have not previously needed to produce ADA-compliant audit files and may need assistance to deliver compliant copies, staff said. The records lead reminded commissioners that the clock to comply runs to April 24 and that some scanned or older documents may require extra staff or vendor help to convert.

Commissioners and staff discussed whether to take down rarely accessed documents during remediation and how to allocate resources; staff said they would consult departments and may contract out the most complex conversions.