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Frequently Asked Questions

Everything You Need to Know
About SentraCheck

Clear answers about PII detection, ADA/WCAG compliance, and Instant PDF Conversion — and why they matter for your organization.

General Questions

Yes. On April 17, 2026, the DOJ published Interim Final Rule RIN 1190-AA82 extending the compliance deadline for large entities (50,000+ population) to April 26, 2027, and for smaller entities and special districts to April 26, 2028. The technical standard (WCAG 2.1 Level AA) and the scope of covered content (including PDFs and documents) were not changed.

No. Title II has a private right of action that predates the 2024 rule. Plaintiff attorneys filed 8,667 ADA lawsuits in 2025 before the federal deadline was even in effect. The extension pushes DOJ enforcement by one year but does not affect private litigation risk or California's Unruh Civil Rights Act ($4,000 statutory damages per violation).

Yes. Delaying exposes you to private ADA lawsuits, California Unruh Act claims ($4,000/violation), and demand letters — none of which were affected by the extension. Rushed compliance in 2027 will cost significantly more than methodical work done now. Start with a free corpus audit to understand your actual exposure.

California's state-level disability access law applies independently of federal ADA and was unaffected by the DOJ extension. The Unruh Civil Rights Act provides minimum statutory damages of $4,000 per violation — meaning a single inaccessible PDF can trigger a $4,000 state claim on top of any federal ADA exposure.

SentraCheck is an AI-powered document compliance platform built for government agencies, public institutions, law firms, and organizations that publish documents. It scans documents before they go live — catching exposed personal information, accessibility failures, and formatting issues that could create legal or reputational risk.

SentraCheck offers three core capabilities: PII Detection, ADA/WCAG Accessibility Scanning, and Instant PDF to HTML Conversion.

SentraCheck is built for any organization that regularly publishes documents and faces compliance obligations. This includes:

  • City clerks and county agencies posting agendas, minutes, and public records
  • Law firms handling sensitive client files and court filings
  • School districts managing FERPA-regulated documents
  • Housing authorities and special districts publishing public notices
  • Any organization subject to ADA Title II or state-level accessibility laws

You upload a document (PDF, Word, or HTML) or point SentraCheck at a URL. Our AI engine analyzes the content, structure, and metadata — then returns a detailed compliance report within seconds.

The platform integrates via API so you can embed scanning directly into your document publishing workflow, CMS, or content approval process. No new software tools for your staff to learn.

Documents are processed securely in your account's isolated environment. We do not share, sell, or use your documents to train AI models. Data retention is configurable — you can set documents to auto-purge after a defined period.

SentraCheck is built with data minimization as a core principle. See our Security & Data page for full details.

SentraCheck supports PDF (including scanned/OCR documents), Microsoft Word (.docx), and HTML documents. PDFs are the most common format for public records, and our OCR pipeline handles scanned documents that lack embedded text.

Yes. API access is available on the Starter plan and above. The REST API lets you submit documents for scanning, retrieve results, and trigger PDF conversions programmatically. Full OpenAPI 3.1 documentation is available in your account dashboard under Settings > API.

SentraCheck offers tiered subscription plans (Starter, Department, Agency, and Enterprise) billed monthly or annually. All plans include PII Detection, ADA/WCAG scanning, and PDF conversion. Scan volume and users scale with the plan tier.

See full plan details on our Pricing page.

PII Detection

SentraCheck detects a comprehensive range of personally identifiable information, including:

  • Social Security Numbers (full and partial)
  • Driver's license numbers and state IDs
  • Financial account and credit card numbers
  • Medical record numbers and health plan IDs
  • Email addresses and phone numbers
  • Residential addresses and property records
  • Dates of birth and biometric identifiers
  • Names in sensitive context (combined with other PII fields)

The AI is context-aware — it distinguishes an email address in a press release byline from one that appears in a confidential personnel file.

Yes. SentraCheck automatically runs OCR (Optical Character Recognition) on pages that don't contain embedded text — such as scanned paper documents or image-only PDFs. The extracted text is then analyzed for PII just like any other document.

This is critical for agencies that digitize paper records or receive scanned submissions from the public.

SentraCheck flags each PII instance with its type, location (page, paragraph), and a risk level. You can review every finding before taking action. Auto-redaction is available and replaces sensitive values with black bars — but the decision to redact is always confirmed by a human reviewer.

This gives you an auditable record: the document was reviewed, findings were confirmed, and redactions were intentional — not accidental omissions.

Government agencies and institutions are subject to a patchwork of privacy laws including FERPA, CCPA (California), and state-level public records acts. Publishing a document that contains unredacted personal information — even accidentally — can result in:

  • Civil liability and regulatory penalties
  • Mandatory breach notification requirements
  • Reputational harm and public trust erosion
  • Expensive legal remediation

A single missed SSN in a 200-page meeting packet can expose hundreds of individuals.

Yes. You can configure which PII categories are relevant to your organization and adjust confidence thresholds to reduce false positives for your document types. Suppression rules let you whitelist known-safe patterns (e.g., a recurring internal ID format that isn't actually sensitive).

ADA & Accessibility Compliance

SentraCheck checks documents against WCAG 2.1 (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) at Level A and AA — the standard referenced by the ADA, Section 508, and the DOJ's updated Title II regulations for state and local governments.

For PDFs specifically, we also apply PDF/UA (Universal Accessibility) checks which govern tagging, reading order, and assistive technology compatibility.

The DOJ finalized rules in 2024 requiring state and local government websites and digital content to meet WCAG 2.1 AA. The deadline for large entities (50K+ population) is April 26, 2027; smaller entities have until April 26, 2028. Non-compliant agencies face DOJ investigations, consent decrees, and civil lawsuits.

Documents — PDFs, meeting minutes, agendas, reports — are explicitly covered. Simply posting a PDF that a screen reader cannot parse is a violation.

Common issues our scanner catches include:

  • Missing or empty document title metadata
  • No document language tag (breaks screen reader pronunciation)
  • Images without alternative text descriptions
  • Incorrect or missing heading structure (H1, H2, H3 tags)
  • Tables without headers or summary attributes
  • Links with non-descriptive text ("click here", "read more")
  • Insufficient color contrast ratios
  • Scanned pages with no searchable/accessible text layer
  • Form fields without accessible labels
  • Reading order issues from multi-column or complex layouts

SentraCheck provides a detailed fix guide for every issue found, including the specific location in the document and the exact change needed. For many issues — like missing alt text, incorrect heading levels, or missing language tags — our AI suggests the corrected values directly, so your team just needs to review and apply.

For full accessibility remediation of legacy PDF libraries, we recommend converting documents to accessible HTML using the Instant PDF Conversion module, which produces WCAG-compliant output automatically.

Most automated accessibility checkers test live web pages — they crawl your website after documents are published. SentraCheck scans before you publish, catching problems at the source. This is the critical difference: reactive tools tell you what's wrong on your public site; SentraCheck prevents the problem from going live in the first place.

Additionally, SentraCheck combines accessibility scanning with PII detection in the same pass — so one submission catches both privacy risks and accessibility failures.

Yes. Every scan generates a timestamped compliance report that documents what was checked, what was found, and what action was taken. These reports serve as an auditable record of your organization's due diligence — valuable evidence if your compliance program is ever challenged by a regulatory body or in litigation.

Instant PDF Conversion

Instant PDF Conversion transforms your PDF documents into structured, accessible HTML that works on any device. The output preserves headings, tables, lists, and images — while producing clean, screen-reader-friendly markup that meets WCAG 2.1 AA standards.

Unlike a simple text extraction, the HTML output maintains document structure and is formatted for readability — making your PDFs genuinely accessible to users with disabilities, mobile visitors, and translation tools.

Remediating a complex PDF to full accessibility compliance can take hours of manual work per document — adding tags, fixing reading order, writing alt text. That's not practical for organizations that publish dozens or hundreds of documents per month.

HTML is natively accessible. A well-structured HTML page with proper heading tags, semantic markup, and alt text is immediately compatible with screen readers, mobile browsers, and assistive technology — with no remediation needed. Converting a PDF to accessible HTML is often faster and more durable than trying to fix the PDF itself.

Yes. The conversion pipeline automatically detects image-only pages and runs OCR to extract the text content. The resulting HTML contains the extracted text rather than the image — making previously inaccessible scanned documents fully searchable and readable by assistive technology.

You have two options:

  • SentraCheck Viewer: We host the converted document and provide a shareable URL (e.g., sentracheck.com/viewer.html?id=...). Link to this URL from your website instead of linking to the PDF. No CMS changes needed.
  • Raw HTML via API: If you prefer to host the output yourself, the API returns the full HTML string. You can paste it into your CMS, store it in your own system, or render it however fits your infrastructure. The viewer is not required.

SentraCheck preserves the semantic structure of your document — headings, paragraphs, tables, lists, and images all carry over. The HTML is styled for clean readability rather than pixel-perfect PDF replication, which is intentional: the goal is accessible web content, not a screenshot of a PDF.

Complex multi-column layouts, footnotes, and decorative images are handled gracefully. Our AI classifies page elements to decide what's content versus background, reducing clutter in the output.

Conversion is priced per page and included in your subscription plan up to your plan's monthly page allowance. Additional pages are available as overages. A typical 20-page PDF costs fractions of a dollar in compute — making it practical to convert entire document libraries.

Hash-based caching means the same PDF converted twice only costs compute once — subsequent requests return the stored result instantly at no additional cost.

Yes. The batch conversion API accepts lists of URLs or file uploads and processes them asynchronously. You submit a batch, and SentraCheck converts each document in the background — notifying you (or your webhook) as each conversion completes. This is designed for agencies that need to convert years of archived PDFs efficiently.

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