All PDFs on our website meet our guidelines for what PDFs we will, and will not, put up.
If a PDF can go on our website, we make the following accessibility checks on the Word version of the document:
- Does it have a meaningful document title (title in the document properties)?
- Is all the content selectable with the cursor? If working on a long document like a parking consultation, make sure to check pages throughout the document, and not just the first or second pages.
- Is it using heading styles rather than bold or a larger font to show subheadings?
- Are lists using the bullet format rather than just hyphens or asterisks?
- If the document is longer than a few pages, does it have a table of contents?
- If there are tables, do they have a row and/or column header and a table caption?
- Do all images have alt text or are marked as decorative?
- Is the font accessible (like a sans-serif) and large enough – at least 12pt?
- Do links have meaningful, descriptive text?
- Are emails 'mailto:' linked so users can click on it and go to their email account if they want to?
- If the document has images with text, is there enough colour contrast so the text is easily read?
- If any charts/maps or other visual representation tools are present as images, is there a text alternative?
If working on a Word document, when it passes accessibility checks, export it as a tagged PDF.