WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

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Re: PDF on websites

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From: Chagnon | PubCom
Date: Jun 25, 2013 10:08AM

My job is to communicate one person's ideas to another person.

Sometimes I'm hired by a nonprofit to persuade people about a political or
social issue.
Sometimes I'm hired by a corporation to persuade people to buy their product
or service.
Sometimes by an educational institution to educate its students.
Sometimes by a government entity to inform its constituents.

But my job is to communicate using the best combination of words, graphics,
audio/video, and technologies available to get the message sent, read, and
understood.

Saying that PDFs should be converted to HTML wipes out one of my best, most
effective tools for communicating - I doubt my clients will allow me to stop
making PDFs! The benefits to them are tremendous:

1) Total control over the appearance of the message. From typefaces and
color to strategic design and placement of the elements to invoke a
particular psychological response from the reader, I can't get that level of
control in HTML.

2) Succinct navigation. I can build quicker, easier navigation for a large,
complex PDF than I can into a series of HTML webpages.

3) Eye appeal. I can create a better-looking PDF than I can an HTML webpage,
and a better visual appearance translates into a more successful
communication piece.

4) One file. A PDF can contain dozens of other documents wrapped up into one
self-contained package. Easy to send via email or store on a server or in a
content management system.

5) Snapshot. Like a camera, a PDF can capture and preserve the state of a
document at a particular point in time, such as here is the report as of
last Friday. It can also be secured and made taper-proof. It's often used
for archival of documents. And it is used as an electronic paper trail in
institutions and large entities.

6) Workgroup tool. PDFs are passed around workgroups where members add
comments. Everyone can see everyone else's comments so issues or portions of
the document are openly discussed. I can't do this with HTML, not even with
group collaborative cloud-ware.

Note that so many of these benefits are visually oriented. 90% of the
information received by someone who is fully sighted is visual information,
so the bulk of communication is focused on its appearance, then on its
content.

Therefore, PDFs are not going to go away. I doubt I'll ever hear my clients
say, "Bevi, stop making PDFs and switch our material to HTML." They'd lose
so much of their power to communicate.

A better, more effective strategy for WebAIM is to get Adobe, Microsoft, and
the AT manufacturers to create better tools for PDFs (and other documents)
accessibility software/technologies. A well-made PDF can be accessible and
can equally match accessible HTML, but today's tools sometimes make it
difficult and costly to achieve that.

As a communicator, I want better tools so that I can successfully
communicate with everyone, regardless of whether they have a disability or
not.

-Bevi Chagnon

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