Legislative Council staff shifts accessibility work from costly PDF remediation to HTML and application fixes; committee recommends budget

Legislative Council staff told the Joint Technology Committee on an IT budget request that it has reduced projected document-remediation costs dramatically and is shifting effort and funding toward making public-facing applications accessible.

The change comes as staff reported finding a lower-cost vendor for PDF remediation and a larger strategic shift toward converting frequently updated documents to HTML and prioritizing remediation for high‑traffic applications. "It never stops," Manish Jani, legislative council staff, said of rising IT demand as he outlined the request.

The shift reduced one vendor-based estimate that previously approached $931,000, staff said, though different slides presented multiple year-to-year figures: Manish Jani reported a lowered per-page vendor cost that brought some remediation estimates "to just under $110,000," while Natalie Castle, Director of Legislative Council staff, said the department now expects to spend about $256,000 this fiscal year on document remediation and is asking to roll any unused funds into the next fiscal year.

Why it matters: the legislature is required to make digital services and documents accessible under the accessibility standards staff cited. Staff told the committee this is a one-time, front-loaded effort that will require both staff and contract resources and that the legislature is asking for authority to use the Legislative Department Cash Fund to pay for some of that work.

Staff described four budget categories: (1) software and related services including cybersecurity and disaster recovery; (2) an operating inflationary increase for ongoing software services; (3) a cash-funded annual set-aside of $150,000 for device refreshes; and (4) accessibility compliance. Castle said the department requested a net general‑fund reduction of roughly $480,000 paired with an increase in cash‑fund authority of roughly $250,000 for one-time application contractor work, producing an overall decrease of about $230,000 in next year’s accessibility-related total compared with the current year’s budgeted amount.

On remediation strategy, staff described converting short‑lived documents (for example, calendars) to automatically produced HTML pages rather than remediating a high daily page count of PDFs. "A document such as a calendar has a very short lifespan," Castle said, and converting to HTML reduced recurring remediation costs. Staff also reported improvements to style guides, templates, and automation and credited Annabelle Tracy, the IT accessibility manager, for leading that work.

Staff said they will prioritize public-facing applications for WCAG 2.2 compliance first, starting with the website (a redesign beta was planned for release) and then moving to dynamic legislative content and internal applications. Manish Jani and Natalie Castle said the department is using both WCAG 2.2 (for web content) and PDF/UA (for PDF accessibility) and that documents will be tested against those standards.

On funding and the cash fund: Castle explained that the Legislative Department Cash Fund receives annual reversions from legislative appropriations and is continuously appropriated to the executive committee for department expenses, with a current unencumbered balance staff reported as about $21,000,000. The fund has historically been used for one‑time expenses such as building renovations and IT projects. Staff asked the committee for authority to use cash fund dollars for the front‑loaded accessibility application work and for the annual device-refresh set‑aside.

Committee members asked whether the lower-cost remediation approach reduces fidelity. Jani said documents and applications will be tested and must meet the applicable standards; "there is no loss in fidelity or quality of the remediated documents," he said, noting both standards and testing procedures are in place.

The committee then moved to a formal recommendation. Senator Marchman moved "to recommend the approval of legislative information services budget request to the executive committee." The motion passed unanimously; committee members recorded as voting in favor during the roll call included Marchman, Weinberg, Haskell and Rodriguez, with Representative Pascoe excused.

The department left the committee with specific next steps: staff will continue converting eligible documents to HTML, continue vendor remediation where required, prioritize remediation of public-facing applications (website and high-use systems), and return with additional detail as the scope of application work is better quantified.

The committee’s vote recommends approval to the executive committee; the executive committee will determine final authority for cash-fund spending and any roll-forward of unspent appropriations.