Part Two: Why PDFs are not a suitable solution

Check out Part One: Accessibility of PDFs and other downloadable documents

Why PDFs are not always a suitable solution

A stack of brightly coloured hardcover books

There are many reasons, especially with the advent of social media, why PDFs are not a suitable solution for releasing content. It is important, as an organisation, to support your end users by providing them content that they can easily access and read. If you are providing content via PDF, you should seriously consider the following issues and ensure that they do not apply:

PDFs are not as highly ranked by Google
PDFs are not easily shareable
PDFs are difficult to use and access on mobile
PDFs are not a preferred format

PDFs are not as highly ranked by Google

When given a choice, users choose HTML over PDF. If Search Engine Optimisation is important to your organisation, then you should not provide content in PDFs. In 2011, the Department of Primary Industries removed the 4 thousand PDFs on their web site, which resulted in a 38% (1.6 million) page view increase.

PDFs are not easily shareable

Although PDFs are easy to email, with the advent of SaaS solutions, people often have unlimited, uninterrupted internet access, which does not require a downloadable solution. Social media such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and WhatsApp do not fully support PDFs, and PDFs are difficult to share on those platforms. Web site URLs are much easier to share.

A bunch of Asian looking people on a train looking at their mobile phone screens

PDFs are difficult to use and access on mobile

PDFs are much larger to download than a web page, and this causes problems for users on mobile devices or on a mobile network. Almost 50% of all internet usage is via a mobile or tablet device in Australia. PDF size is also a problem for people on limited data download plans. This is especially a problem for people with disabilities, as 38% of people with a disability and 51% people with a profound disability are in the lowest level of personal income in Australia, compared with 27% of people without a disability.

PDFs are not a preferred format

In a study conducted by Consumer Affairs Victoria from 2013 to 2015, 99.3% of users (109,157 users) chose the HTML page over the PDF when given a choice). In 2015, that number had jumped to 99.6%, with more than 2.4 million HTML page views versus 10 thousand PDF views.

Current status of PDFs

Adobe has spent some time to make PDFs more accessible, however the Commission has not had the opportunity to investigate these improvements. PDFs should be used only in very specific circumstances when HTML is not suitable, and all tagging features are utilised where PDFs are used. Some examples of these situations would be:

When the document will be printed and/or the layout of content is essential, for example, sending worksheets to teachers to print out or route maps to drivers.

There may also be specific instances where HTML is not suitable and both Word and PDF formats can be provided, such as:

For very short-term content, such as meeting agendas and minutes (unless these need to be made publicly available)
When the document is meant to be shared via email within a small group of people, and it is not appropriate for it to be hosted on a web site.

Want to learn more?

Check out our CEO, Gian Wild’s paper, “Are PDFs an accessible solution?”

Need accessible documents, or conversions to HTML?

AccessibilityOz can help you! Check out our Services page on Accessible Word, PowerPoint, Excel, PDFs, Email and HTML documents, fill out our Document Remediation quote request or get in contact.

Need to convince someone else, or need training?

We can do that too! We offer this article as a seminar: PDFs and accessibility and the following document training:

… or check out our other training!