Transparency.
We publish what we spend and why. If you are a university partner, a funder, or a student, this page shows how The Accessible Documents Initiative operates.
What transparency means to us
Most document accessibility providers do not publish their costs. We do. Every component of what we spend is listed on this page.
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Cost-recovery pricing
Universities pay only what it costs us to process their documents. No profit margin. No hidden fees. The methodology on this page is the basis of every invoice.
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Free for students
Individual students never pay. This service is funded by university partnerships and by the founder until partnerships are in place.
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Updated quarterly
This page is updated every three months. If our costs change, you see the change here before it appears on any invoice.
How we work with universities
We charge universities only the actual cost of processing their documents. No profit margin. No hidden fees.
The exact cost depends on document complexity. Scanned documents cost more than native PDFs, and STEM content with equations costs more than plain text. We determine this during the sample analysis step of onboarding, based on real costs for that specific document type.
The goal is independence, not dependency
We do not want universities to depend on us forever. Our aim is to train university teams, free of cost, on how to set up their own process for producing accessible content internally.
We help set up the pipeline, train the staff, and hand over the tools. Within 12 to 18 months, the goal is for your university to process accessible documents independently.
Specific costs are discussed during onboarding conversations. Learn about partnerships.
Our infrastructure
These are the categories of cost that keep the Accessible Documents Initiative platform running. We publish the component list so you can see exactly what the service depends on. Specific amounts are shared during onboarding and reviewed quarterly.
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Server and hosting
- VPS (Hetzner or DigitalOcean).
- Domain (GoDaddy).
- Static site (GitHub Pages, no fee).
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Software and tools
- PDFix SDK (licensed, amortised across documents processed).
- Mathpix Convert API (per-page charge, STEM content only).
- Tesseract OCR (no licence fee).
- veraPDF validation (no licence fee).
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Services
- Email delivery (Resend).
- Virus scanning (ClamAV, no licence fee).
- SSL certificates (Let's Encrypt, no fee).
We use open licence tools wherever the result is as good or better. Not because they are free, but because they are auditable and not controlled by a single vendor.
Progress
These numbers update as we work. The Accessible Documents Initiative started in March 2026. If a number is zero, it means we have not reached that milestone yet. We will not inflate these numbers.
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Documents remediated
Coming online with the portal.
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University partners
Coming online with the portal.
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Community of Practice members
Coming online with the portal.
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Languages served
Coming online with the portal.
These counters will be connected to the database when the portal is deployed. Until then, they are updated manually.
How we calculate and report
So you can verify our numbers, here is how we count things.
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Documents remediated
A document is counted as remediated when it has passed veraPDF validation and been delivered to the student or university. Documents that fail validation or are still in progress are not counted.
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Per-page pricing
Pricing depends on complexity. A short native PDF with simple text is at the low end. A scanned document with tables and images is at the high end. The exact price for a batch is determined during the sample analysis step of university onboarding.
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Specialist review time
Valued at a fair-value hourly rate, used consistently whether the work is done by paid specialists or by Community of Practice volunteers. We do not claim volunteer labour is free. We account for it at its real value.
Questions about our finances or methodology?
We are happy to answer. Transparency means being available to explain, not just publishing numbers.