Estimating Accessibility Remediation Costs: A US University Planning Model

Accessibility remediation cost depends on the content, available sources, staff capability and acceptance checks. A budget should cover the complete workflow, not just scanning or the price of a tool.

Build a local baseline

Inventory formats, complexity, page counts and source availability. Record intake, authoring or remediation, specialist review, verification, publication and rework time on representative material. Include unsupported files and failures. Use documented local labour rates and current quotations.

Faculty review is not free simply because it occurs within normal duties. Treat it as capacity that competes with other work, even when the incremental cash cost differs from the resource cost.

Illustrative manual-cost calculation

Assume 1,000 documents, an average of one hour of total staff work per document, and a fully burdened rate of $75 per hour. The model gives 1,000 × 1 × $75 = $75,000 in staff cost, before any separately excluded infrastructure or service costs. These are hypothetical inputs, not an industry rate, customer result or prediction for your inventory.

Replace the average with measured values for different document categories. A short source document and a complex scanned textbook chapter should not share an assumed unit cost without evidence.

Compare an assisted workflow fairly

Add software or service charges, compute and provider costs, intake, review, correction, verification and the remaining manual workload. Estimate savings only after both workflows have been measured with equivalent acceptance checks. An output that is refused or unusable must not count as completed work.

Aelira Core v0.9.11 is beta. Supported workflows can detect issues, suggest changes and apply eligible partial fixes. Other findings need manual work, and some inputs may not produce a downloadable remediated artifact. Review the actual saved file, its recorded fixes and its unresolved findings. An automated score does not establish WCAG conformance.

A scanning service may be useful alongside manual remediation; an assisted tool may reduce selected tasks. Neither label establishes the cheaper or more accessible result for every institution.

Price services using current terms

The self-hosted software is free and open source. Paid services cover support or managed hosting. Operational allowances, provider charges and service commitments depend on the chosen deployment and written terms; free software does not mean unlimited processing or zero operating cost. Use current US pricing or current Australian pricing, and obtain a written pilot quote covering continuation terms.

Do not extrapolate fixed launch prices, promotional periods or support promises from an older article. Obtain a quote specifying scope, allowances, exclusions and continuation terms.

Keep legal and operational costs separate

The DOJ's Title II web rule applies to state and local government entities, including public universities. The April 2026 Interim Final Rule extended compliance dates to April 26, 2027 for public entities with populations of 50,000 or more, and April 26, 2028 for smaller entities and special district governments. These are population cohorts under the rule, not student-enrollment thresholds. Federal funding alone does not make a private university a Title II public entity; other disability laws may apply.

Complaint-response or legal costs depend on the specific matter. Do not use an invented average settlement or projected funding loss as an ROI input. Report measured capacity, accepted outputs and unresolved risks alongside the cost comparison.

Further reading

These links provide additional context; each source should be assessed for its own scope.

The April 2026 ADA Deadline Was Extended — What Universities Should Do Now