WCAG Compliance and Laserfiche: What Agencies Need to Know About Accessibility

Are You WCAG Compliant?

Accessibility is no longer optional for public agencies. Under ADA Title II, Section 508, and various state-level mandates, digital content must be accessible to all members of the public. Cities and special districts are increasingly discovering that, even with powerful tools like Laserfiche, WCAG compliance remains a shared responsibility. Laserfiche offers accessibility features, but the content itself remains in the agency's hands. This blog explains how WCAG requirements intersect with Laserfiche and why CPS plays a critical role in helping agencies bridge the gap.

Laserfiche Is an Accessible Platform, Not an Accessibility Engine

Laserfiche WebLink and Laserfiche Cloud include several built-in accessibility features. These include keyboard operability, visible focus indicators, logical headings, and text resizing. The WebLink viewer also supports assistive technologies such as screen readers and provides consistent navigation across pages. According to the Laserfiche WebLink Accessibility Conformance Report, many WCAG 2.1 A and AA standards are supported or partially supported. However, these features apply only to the interface used to view documents, not the documents themselves.

This is the key distinction. Laserfiche ensures that its viewing environment behaves accessibly, but it does not remediate uploaded content. A PDF without tags stays untagged. A scanned image without OCR remains unreadable. A document without headings stays unstructured. Accessibility of public records always depends on the content the agency uploads, not the repository where it is stored.

Why CMS Platforms Still Carry Most of the Burden

WCAG is fundamentally a content standard, not a software standard. It applies to what the public sees. CMS systems such as Granicus, CivicPlus, WordPress, and Wix generate the HTML, page structure, and navigation elements that must pass WCAG AA. Agencies are responsible for ensuring that the content published through these systems meets accessibility criteria. If an inaccessible PDF is posted publicly, the legal liability rests with the agency, not the CMS or the ECM system where the file originated.

Laserfiche does not function as a CMS. Even when WebLink is used as a public-facing portal, it serves as a viewer and retrieval tool. That means agencies remain responsible for ensuring that documents displayed in Laserfiche meet WCAG standards before they are posted.

Where Backfile Conversion Fits In

Legacy documents are one of the most significant accessibility pitfalls for agencies. Decades of agendas, minutes, contracts, engineering drawings, and records often exist only as scanned images. These documents are entirely inaccessible to anyone using screen readers or requiring assistive technologies. Backfile conversion removes this barrier by producing clean, consistent, and fully OCR’d documents that accessibility tools can read.

Backfile conversion does not add headings, alt text, table structures, or reading order. It does not produce a fully WCAG-compliant document on its own. What it does is create real text that can be searched, indexed, and remediated for accessibility. It transforms inaccessible files into a format that can be corrected. Digitization is the essential first step; accessibility remediation is the second. Agencies need both.

How CPS Helps Agencies Close the Compliance Gap

CPS specializes in helping agencies understand and meet accessibility requirements across the complete Laserfiche ecosystem. This includes:

• Backfile conversion that produces OCR’d, readable documents

• PDF remediation for WCAG AA compliance

• Accessibility-friendly Laserfiche Forms design

• Metadata strategies that support screen readers

• Guidance on posting accessible agendas and public records

• Support for creating accessible workflows and public portals

CPS combines technical expertise with practical implementation strategies, ensuring that agencies do not just digitize their records but also make them accessible.

Laserfiche supports accessibility, but it does not create accessibility. WCAG compliance always begins with the agency and the content it publishes.

Backfile conversion provides the foundation. Remediation and proper content creation complete the job. CPS stands beside agencies at every step of this journey, helping them turn digitization into true digital accessibility.