89f9cffe-ad5e-4d4f-aca5-c950f2a5d99f_St_Stephen_in_Brannel_Accessibility_Proposal-artifacted.pdf — PaddleOCR-VL (Baidu)

The staff-time and ROI case

The financial case is not only about clearing a backlog. It is about reducing repeated checking, avoiding rework and giving Ruth and Mel more time for their wider council responsibilities.

Evidence/assumption	Commercial significance
A recent meeting-document batch took around 70 minutes to check and publish.	The cost is recurring operational time, not a one-off project cost.
431 PDFs were associated with 2026.	The changed publishing model makes a reliable future workflow increasingly important.
Two staff contribute to accessibility checking and remediation.	Manual checking can displace higher-value administrative and governance work.
The meeting ROI model used a £30,000 salary assumption and a 22-minute remediation assumption.	The calculator indicated a potential benefit of approximately £42,656 within the first 2 years; this remains illustrative until the council confirms the inputs and whether time is measured per page or per document.

ROI INTERPRETATION The strongest decision case is the combination of recoverable staff time, fewer repeat checks, more consistent outcomes and a defensible evidence trail. The £42,656 model should not be treated as a guaranteed cash saving.

What the proposed workflow changes

New PDFs can be dragged into the portal, assessed, remediated, reviewed and downloaded before publication.
Historic PDFs can be selected and remediated in batches, including one-page ‘quick wins’ that clear whole documents efficiently.
A 301 redirect can send visitors from the original PDF link to the remediated version, reducing the need to replace historic links individually.
Remediated documents can be hosted by Recite Me as standard or supplied back to the council for its preferred hosting route.
Recite Me carries out sample quality checks on remediated documents to monitor the performance of the service.