Federal agencies have spent years improving the accessibility of websites, digital services and citizen-facing applications, but many continue to struggle with another challenge hiding in plain sight: the enormous backlog of digital documents sitting behind those websites.

Reports, forms, policy documents, procurement records, meeting materials, archived files, and scanned PDFs often represent decades of accumulated information. Much of it remains difficult, or impossible, for people using assistive technologies to access.

Recent findings from the federal government’s FY 2025 Governmentwide Section 508 Assessment illustrate the scope of the challenge. Agencies rated their overall accessibility conformance at just 1.96 out of 5, fewer than half reported that their most frequently used digital assets fully conform to Section 508 requirements, and approximately half said they do not routinely test information and communication technology for accessibility as part of standard business practices. Those numbers might suggest a compliance problem. In reality, they point to something larger.

The issue is no longer understanding what Section 508 requires. Federal accessibility requirements have been well established for years and continue to evolve alongside standards such as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1.

The real challenge is capacity. As agencies produce more digital content than ever before, accessibility has become less of a compliance exercise and more of a digital operations challenge. The question is whether agencies have the organizational capacity to make enormous, continually growing collections of information accessible throughout their lifecycles.

Federal modernization efforts have delivered meaningful progress over the past decade. Agencies have redesigned websites, improved digital services, expanded online transactions, and invested heavily in customer experience initiatives that make it easier for citizens to access government information. Behind these improvements, however, another trend has quietly accelerated.

Government has become increasingly digital. Nearly every business process now generates documents. Collaboration platforms create meeting notes and presentations. Procurement systems produce contracts and supporting documentation. Program offices publish reports, policies, guidance and public records at a pace unimaginable just a decade ago. Each modernization initiative adds to an already substantial inventory of digital content.

Unlike websites, which typically follow centralized governance and publishing processes, document repositories often grow organically across offices, programs and years of operation. Many agencies now manage hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of digital files created with different tools, formats and accessibility practices.

As the Association for Intelligent Information Management (AIIM) has argued, organizations increasingly manage information rather than traditional “documents,” making accessibility inseparable from broader information governance and lifecycle management.

Accessibility requirements did not suddenly become more difficult. The amount of content simply outgrew the processes agencies have traditionally used to manage it.

Historically, accessibility has often been treated as a final review before publication or a corrective effort triggered by an audit or modernization initiative. That approach may have worked when organizations published relatively small volumes of content. It becomes increasingly difficult when agencies are continuously creating new information while simultaneously maintaining decades of existing records.

This is not unique to accessibility. Across government, agencies are confronting similar challenges in cybersecurity, records management, data governance and digital preservation. The volume of information has expanded faster than the manual processes designed to manage it.

In many organizations, specialists spend significant time manually reviewing documents, adding tags, verifying reading order, checking tables, evaluating images and correcting formatting issues. While these activities remain essential, they are also labor intensive and difficult to scale across large document inventories.

Not surprisingly, the FY 2025 assessment concluded that testing and remediation remain among the weakest aspects of Section 508 implementation across government. The report also found that agency size was not the determining factor in accessibility success. Effective governance, repeatable processes, and implementation practices mattered more. In other words, capacity — not intent — is increasingly becoming the limiting factor.

When agencies fall behind on accessibility, it is rarely because they disagree with the goal. More often, they simply lack enough time, people, or repeatable processes to keep pace with the growing volume of digital content. This represents an important shift in how accessibility should be viewed.

Rather than asking, “How do we remediate this document?” agencies increasingly need to ask, “How do we build accessibility into the way information moves through the organization?” That means treating accessibility as part of digital operations rather than as a standalone compliance project.

Just as cybersecurity has evolved from periodic reviews into continuous monitoring, accessibility increasingly needs to become part of everyday content creation, publishing, governance and lifecycle management. Documents should be evaluated earlier in their lifecycle. Publishing workflows should encourage accessible authoring from the beginning. Governance should establish consistent standards across business units. And repetitive tasks should be streamlined wherever appropriate so specialists can focus on the work that requires human expertise.

As agencies rethink accessibility at scale, automation is becoming an increasingly important part of the conversation. That doesn’t mean replacing accessibility professionals or eliminating human review. Instead, automation changes where experts spend their time.

Routine document processing can reduce repetitive work, allowing specialists to concentrate on complex documents, quality assurance, governance, and the exceptions that require judgment and experience. It’s like how automation has transformed cybersecurity, records management and other operational disciplines. Technology supports professionals by handling repetitive work so they can focus on higher-value decisions.

Accessibility should be viewed through the same lens. Success is not measured by how many documents can be remediated manually, but whether agencies can establish sustainable workflows that keep accessible information flowing as digital content continues to grow.

Federal agencies continue to modernize how they create, manage and share information. Accessibility should be considered part of that broader transformation, not a separate compliance obligation operating alongside it.

Accessible information improves public access, supports employees with disabilities, strengthens digital services, and reduces the long-term costs associated with large remediation backlogs. It also aligns with broader government priorities around customer experience, information management and digital service delivery.

The agencies that will be most successful over the next decade will be those that redesign accessibility to be integral to how digital information is created, managed and maintained throughout its lifecycle.

Section 508 compliance remains the objective. Building the operational capacity to achieve it consistently — and sustainably — is the challenge that lies ahead.

Dennis DuFour is president of TDEC.

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