Accessible PDFs and Downloads: What Small Sites Should Know

Menus, price lists, brochures, forms, and reports are often shared as PDFs. A PDF exported carelessly can be unreadable to screen readers, impossible to zoom comfortably on a phone, and invisible to search engines. A little care, or a different format, solves most problems.

Ask first: does it need to be a PDF?

Often, a web page is better. HTML pages:

• Reflow to any screen size and zoom level
• Work well with screen readers and other tools
• Load faster and are easier to update
• Are indexed and searched more easily. See on-page SEO checklist

Use a PDF when you really need a fixed layout for printing or formal documents. Even then, consider offering the content as a web page too. This is especially true for restaurant menus. See restaurant website design essentials.

If you publish a PDF, make it accessible

Start in the source document, such as Word or a design tool. It's much easier to build accessibility in at the start than to repair a PDF later.

1. Use real structure. Apply heading styles, real lists, and table markup in the source document, rather than just changing font sizes.

2. Write alt text for images, or mark purely decorative images as such. See alt text best practices.

3. Keep text as text. A scan or photograph of a page has no readable text. If you must use a scan, run text recognition and check the result.

4. Set the document language and title. These help screen readers pronounce the content correctly and announce the document.

5. Check reading order. The order in which content is read should match the visual order, especially with columns and sidebars.

6. Use sufficient contrast for text and graphics. See color contrast.

7. Make links descriptive rather than a bare "click here."

8. Build forms properly. Fillable fields need labels and a logical tab order. Consider whether a web form would be better. See accessible forms.

9. Export as a tagged PDF. Most word processors offer an option to create tags from the document structure. This is what makes a PDF accessible.

10. Run an accessibility checker, such as the one in Acrobat or a free tool, and review the results manually. Automated checks catch only some problems.

On your website

• Link to the PDF with clear text that includes the file type and approximate size, for example "Download our price list (PDF, 250 KB)"
• Don't rely on PDFs for essential information that isn't available elsewhere
• Keep file sizes reasonable. See how to reduce load time
• Open links normally rather than forcing a new window, or warn people if one will open
• Keep the PDF up to date, and remove old versions that might be indexed

Other downloads

The same principles apply to spreadsheets, slide decks, and Word documents. Use structure, headings, alt text, and clear tables. See accessible tables.

Why it matters

Inaccessible documents exclude people and may create legal risk where accessibility rules apply. See accessibility laws for small business websites.

The bottom line

Prefer web pages. If you do publish PDFs, build them from properly structured source documents, export them as tagged PDFs, and check them.