WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

PDF Default Behavior

for

From: David Ashleydale
Date: Mar 18, 2009 3:35PM

Does anyone know the default behavior for links that open PDFs? Is the
default behavior to open the PDF in the parent window, or is it to open
Adobe Reader separate from the browser? I would guess it's different for
different browser/platform combos.

I know that PDFs opening within the browser window can be problematic for
non-mouse users, because the keyboard "previous page" command (Alt + left
arrow) will no longer take the user back to the originating browser page. If
the default behavior is to open PDFs in Reader outside of the browser, then
that's fine. But if the default behavior is to open them within the browser,
I wonder what I can do to make the experience better for non-mouse users. I
could force the PDF to open in a new browser window, but that sometimes
seems to result in blank browser windows, depending on the user's setup.

Is there a good "best practice" for accessibly coding links that go to PDFs?
Is it best to just leave them as is, or is there something that page
designers can do to make them more accessible to everyone? I do like to at
least include "(PDF)" at the end of the link text.

Thanks,
David