Why We Built DocAccess: Turning PDFs into True Accessibility
Annelise Spargo
Why DocAccess
DocAccess was built by Streamline, a GovTech company trusted by more than 2,500 local governments nationwide. Our mission has always been simple: communities better served.
Working with local governments across the country, we’ve seen the tension: accessibility often feels overwhelming for agencies, and frustrating for the community members left waiting. Agencies are stuck with confusing, expensive remediation requirements — while end users with disabilities can’t access critical information online at all.
Public agencies rely on PDFs to share budgets, reports, forms, and notices — but for community members who use assistive technology, these documents are often impossible to access. The options weren’t great: pay thousands for manual remediation, wait weeks for turnaround, or ask community members with disabilities to file requests just to access the same information everyone else could see instantly.
That didn’t feel like equity. And it didn’t feel like communities better served.
The Reason We Built DocAccess
Our customers made it clear: they needed something better. Something affordable, immediate, and equitable.
We also heard directly from screen reader users about the frustration of trying to navigate inaccessible PDFs — like having an urgent wildfire evacuation notice read out letter by letter instead of as usable text. The existing solutions worked for no one: agencies couldn’t afford or sustain them, and community members couldn’t access the information they needed when it mattered most.
That’s why we built DocAccess — to remove barriers and make public documents accessible for all.
DocAccess automatically converts digital documents into WCAG 2.1AA-compliant HTML transcripts that are:
- Seamlessly compatible with screen readers and assistive technologies
- Translatable instantly into 150+ languages
- Simple and intuitive to navigate
DocAccess includes built-in live visual interpretation through our partnership with Aira, reflecting our commitment to responsible AI: automation where it works best, with a human always in the loop when needed.
“DocAccess is by far the best solution of its kind on the market today. As a life-long screen reader user I can confidently say that it just works, exactly as advertised. The decades-long PDF accessibility problem has finally, finally been solved. No longer do I breathe a sigh of annoyance upon seeing a terrible PDF, because DocAccess fixes it right up for me without losing out on context. Stop searching for the next greatest thing, it’s right here.”
— Carter Temm, IAAP Certified Web Accessibility Specialist (WAS) and NVDA Contributor
Why It Matters
DocAccess isn’t just about compliance. It’s about ensuring every community member can access the information they need, when they need it. Because when information is accessible to all, communities are stronger, more transparent, and truly better served.