About us
Accessible documents – built for everyday work in public administration.
DokAudit is developed by Nils Lappenbusch in Buchs ZH, Switzerland, and operated in Germany. The software takes the legwork out of accessible PDFs for public administrations – and says honestly where people still need to take a look.
- Developed in Switzerland and Germany
- Hosting in Germany (ISO/IEC 27001)
- Pre-Checks produced for more than 60 municipalities
Get in touch · Read the user story
Why DokAudit exists
Many public administrations have rebuilt their websites to be accessible in recent years. The documents behind them – bylaws, budgets, official gazettes, forms, minutes – usually are not. For a screen reader they are often just a jumbled sequence of characters, and reworking hundreds of files by hand is hardly feasible.
That is exactly where DokAudit comes in: the software finds the PDFs on a website, assesses them against PDF/UA-1, WCAG 2.2 and BITV 2.0 (Germany's federal accessibility ordinance for IT), automatically repairs whatever can be solved reliably on a technical level, and backs up the result with a check report. Anything that requires an expert decision – such as whether an alt text describes a chart correctly – it shows openly instead of hiding it.
What DokAudit does differently
- Measured, not claimed: Every change is re-measured with veraPDF and the Matterhorn checkpoints that PAC also reports – and only kept if it is an improvement. How this works is explained openly on the technology page.
- One file for website and archive: Accessible to PDF/UA-1 and at the same time suitable for archiving to PDF/A-2a – both checked, in the same file.
- Right inside the content management system: Plugins for TYPO3 and Drupal make every new PDF accessible on upload. File, address and links stay the same.
- Affordable for municipalities: From €0.50 per page in the public sector plan – so that even large volumes such as a budget with more than a thousand pages are feasible.
- Existing documents and future ones: The website scan finds all existing PDFs; monitoring regularly checks new documents.
- AI with clear limits: AI only helps where rules are not enough, and its output is re-checked. On request, it works only with a provider in the EU – or not at all.
A week with DokAudit
Sandra Keller, web team of a town with around 60,000 inhabitants
- Monday, 9:10 – The report: Via the feedback form in the accessibility statement, a blind citizen reports that he cannot read the fee regulations. Sandra knows it is not the only document. There are hundreds of PDFs on the website, most of them from before the relaunch.
- Monday, 9:40 – The overview: Instead of opening every file individually, she enters the town's address into the website scan. Shortly afterwards she sees in the Pre-Check portal which documents are critical, which problems occur most often – and that most of them can be fixed automatically.
- Monday, 11:00 – Select and optimise: She starts by selecting the most frequently accessed documents: bylaws, forms and the current official gazette. DokAudit tags structure and reading order, adds title and language, labels form fields and checks every result again.
- Monday afternoon – Green means done: In the Document Hub, the files are marked “Done”, with accessibility before and after. Her colleague from the press office reviews the suggested alt texts and adjusts two descriptions for accuracy.
- Tuesday – Replace and reply: Sandra downloads all corrected versions as a ZIP and replaces the files on the website. She writes to the citizen that the regulations are now readable – and files the check report for documentation.
- From now on – Kept in view for good: So that new PDFs do not become a problem again, she sets up weekly monitoring. New or changed documents with barriers land in the Hub automatically. She can update the accessibility statement with a clear conscience.
Illustrative user story: the people and the town are fictitious; the workflow and the screens correspond to the real product.
What we stand for
- Honest instead of “100 % automatic”: We automate what can be solved reliably on a technical level, and show openly what needs an expert review by people.
- Data stays in Germany: Operated in an ISO/IEC 27001-certified data centre in Germany, data processing agreement included, configurable deletion periods. AI tasks can be restricted to providers in the EU or switched off.
- Accessible itself: A tool for accessibility must itself be usable – with keyboard, screen reader and magnification.
- Close to public administration: Built for the documents that administrations actually publish: bylaws, budgets, official gazettes, forms and council meeting documents.
Who is behind DokAudit
Nils Lappenbusch grew up in Wolfsburg and now lives in Buchs in the canton of Zurich. As a technology architect and Microsoft Certified Trainer, he has supported organisations with digital transformation and Microsoft 365 for years. DokAudit brings both together: technology that works reliably in the background, and training so that teams can use it confidently in their daily work.
Related ventures
DokAudit does not stand alone – three other ventures feed directly into the software.
- Webdesign Wolfsburg: Web agency for municipalities: complete websites in which accessibility is an integral part from the start – not patched on afterwards.
- SEO38: Visibility in search engines and AI. Here, too, clean structure, semantic markup and machine-readable data count – the same foundation as for accessible documents.
- vibeboxes: AI solutions for the everyday work of organisations. The experience gained there goes into DokAudit's AI functions – used only where they genuinely help.
Nils Lappenbusch – Founder and developer of DokAudit · Microsoft Certified Trainer · Microsoft 365 architect
- Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT)
- Microsoft 365 architect
- Buchs ZH · Switzerland