PDFs or Portable Document Formats have been around for a long time, but it is important to know where they should and should not be used.
A website is not an ideal place for PDF documents for the following reasons:
Most PDFs are not accessible
The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that 1.6 billion people worldwide live with a disability and here in UL approximately 1,000 students are registered with the UL Disability Support Services.
Therefore, if you use non-accessible PDFs on your site, you are denying people living with disabilities from accessing the information.
Non-accessible PDFs are also not compliant with Directive (EU) 2016/2102 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 October 2016 which requires Member States to ensure that websites and mobile applications (apps) of public sector bodies are fully accessible to persons with disabilities.
PDFs can be created in a way that makes them accessible. For example, the document needs to have a logical structure based on tags and headings, meaningful document properties, readable body text, good colour contrast and text alternatives for images. It takes time to do this properly.
Even when this is done there is still no guarantee that this will meet the requirements of the accessibility tool that a person is using.
The UL website is built to be compliant with all accessibility regulations, so if you just create a webpage instead of a PDF document you will meet the requirements.
PDFs are not mobile-friendly
PDFs are not mobile-friendly as they are normally created for desktop or print. As the orientation of a PDF document is fixed, if someone is trying to read it on a mobile device, they will struggle to navigate it and leave the website.
Currently, 65 per cent of people who access the UL website use a mobile device so if you upload a non-accessible PDF more than half of the users of the site will not be able to see it.
Poor SEO performance
There are a lot of elements that ensure that a web ranks highly on a Google search. In a PDF the text is added as an image therefore Google will not be able to read it and in turn will not be able to index the information.
You can add metadata to a PDF, but most people do not do this. Without any metadata, there is nothing describing the content to Google which will negatively impact search results.
In conclusion, it is recommended to present information on a website or web page instead of a PDF. This will ensure accessibility, mobile-friendliness, and improved search ranking.