Going on a Digital Diet: When PDFs become the restricted ingredient

PDF is essentially a set of painting instructions (like paint by number) rather than a structure of flowing text on a screen.

“Painted” text isn’t meant to move on a page (reflow to fit the container), which means PDFs are not responsive to the structure of various devices, renderings, and other web display options.

Further, once those painted letters (literally called “glyphs) are stuck on the screen, they become like ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. They once were full words and sentences and meaningful phrases, but the computer has lost its Rosetta Stone and it is now nothing more than a bunch of pretty symbols.

1. Resize a browser window: let’s compare a policy that is typed onto a webpage directly vs. one that is posted as a PDF. Notice that as you change the size or orientation of the webpage, the placement of the words will change and line breaks change. Not so for the PDF.
   • Policy as an HTML page
   • a PDF that stays fixed

2. Viewing a PDF on mobile: use the QR code to view the same policy document above on a mobile device (phone, tablet).Notice how you need to pinch and zoom to make the text large enough to read – but then most of the text gets cut off. You can rotate your phone to landscape mode which helps, but you may need to slide the text along to be able to read all of it.
3. Export as PDF still loses structure. Something I was not aware of until we began this journey was that there is a major difference between “Print as PDF” and “Export/Save as PDF” or “Export with Adobe Acrobat” when creating a PDF document. “Print as PDF” is essentially like taking a screenshot of the page; “Export/Save” at least preserves a minimum amount of basic semantic information. However, structure information is still lost. Here is a video demonstrating how column structure quickly become nonsensical to a screen reader user reading an untagged PDF.

PDFs are a great tool for what they were designed for – creating an electronic file of a document that preserves the visual look and formatting making it an ideal file type for printing and publishing.

Not for web viewing.

View an example of library policies displayed as HTML content, or use the QR code to view it on a mobile device.

The most basic substitution for PDFs is often simply creating webpage content instead of posting a PDF. You can scan the QR code to see what this looks like on a mobile device or click the QR code for a link to view it in a desktop browser.

We recognize there are challenges to creating webpages – and those are the main reason PDFs became so popular in the first place.

Challenges:

• Library staff who are creating marketing materials and administrative (board, policy documents) and printing PDFs often are not the same people who are managing the website.
• Library staff who are responsible for updating the website are not confident in their skills in creating web content and substitute with PDFs.
• Webpages don’t naturally format for nice printing – inviting a lot of creative solutions with plugins, etc. And you lose the ability to have that beautiful formatting you’ve worked on!
• Graphic design from print publications (Canva) does not translate to web content design. Creating beautiful graphics on the internet is a completely different skillset – and philosophy shift – from the graphic design of marketing that has been popular for the last decade.

Opportunities:

• Simplicity improves experience for everybody.
• Forces you to pay attention to your website as a tool and keep site up-to-date.
• Webpages CAN be beautifully formatted and designed – but it takes time to learn the skill.
• It also maximizes mobile friendliness – improves the viewing experience no matter the screen size or orientation.

If you can’t post a PDF, why not just upload the original source file (Word, Excel, etc.) and let people download the document?

Many people are concerned about releasing editable documents into the wild, which is in part why PDFs were developed and chosen. Still, the gold standard recommendation by all the authorities is to use MS Office tools to create accessible documents, so the logical next step is to simply use them. And in the end we will, just not by directly posting them to be downloaded from your website.

To see the challenges immediately, you can follow this link to view examples of files uploaded and linked on a website as Word documents, or use the QR code to view on a mobile device.

Scroll down to click on “ALA Sample Ethics Policy” and see what happens. In some cases, your device may allow you to view the document text. In others it might tell you that you don’t have the proper software to open it.

Challenges:

• Document must be downloaded to a device view.
• May require the website visitor have license for Microsoft products (or access to alternatives like OpenOffice, LibreOffice, Google Docs, or Pages for Mac).
• Lose control over formatting and content once it is downloaded by end user.
• Still have to re-upload documents if an error is found, similar to PDFs. This also takes up space on your website server, similar to a PDF.

Opportunities:

• Saves the “export as PDF” step.
• Word, Excel, PowerPoint, that have been reviewed to meet accessibility requirements retains all the necessary “semantics” a computer needs to read the content without further remediation.

In order to avoid the challenges that come posting original non-PDF documents online for end users to download, LEANWI Website Services is promoting the use of “live, viewable online documents.” We are using SharePoint as we already have licensing for our libraries to MS Office products, and those are considering governmental/authoritative standards for creating accessible documents. Google productivity suite (Docs, Sheets, Slides) are also an option, but they require the knowledgeable use of an add-on (Grackle) to check for accessibility errors.

Follow the link or scan this QR code will take you to a page that links several example sites for posting policies stored in SharePoint document repositories and linked on websites and, if you scroll down, and example where a library that uses Google Workspace is posting as a Google Doc.

Challenges:

• Requires some technical expertise for setup and learning new workflows and processes.
• Due to the “reflow” and responsive aspects, the look and formatting of documents may not always render exactly on various screens and devices.

Opportunities:

• Posting links to online versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Google Doc, Sheet, or Slides that have been reviewed to meet accessibility requirements retains all of the necessary “semantics” a computer needs to read the content without further remediation.
• Does NOT require the end user to have a specific software license.
• Time and organization saving – if an error is discovered in a document, it can be easily and directly edited and you have saved the steps of “Export as PDF,” “upload document,” and removing the old document from the media library.

The advantage to these in the end is an end-user can see a view-only version of the document and can choose to download and print it for their purposes, and it does not require them to have any specific license to a specific tool. And once you get the process down it saves staff time in editing and managing!

Historical archives (scanned newspapers, yearbooks, maps, handwritten and typed documents of various kinds) offer a unique challenge without easy answers.

Many times these are worst-case scenario PDFs. They were not produced originally in an electronic format, so there is no underlying semantic information. Often they are converted to PDF from image files. Quality of scanning is highly variable. Scanned handwritten pages may be almost impossible to read, much less convert to text.

Even if the PDF version is removed from the website and only image files versions are posted, it would still require ridiculous amounts of alternative text.

AI is allowing for some great developments in digitization and interpretation of historical archives, but these tools are not yet widely available.

If this is an area of primary concern for you, monitor web forums and discussions. We recommend placing an accessibility statement specific to historical archives on any pages containing or linking to those resources on your website.