Using PDFs on Your Website

“Forcing users to browse PDF files causes frustration and slow task completion, compared to standard webpages. Use PDF only for documents that users will print.”

—Nielsen Norman Group

Avoid PDFs

PDFs should be used only for content your users need to print out. This may include reports, manuals, or forms that need to be mailed or dropped off as a hard copy.

Why Are PDFs a Problem?

PDFs on the campus web currently negatively impact

  • usability,
  • accessibility,
  • and SEO.

This means your audience may struggle to find and read your content, and your website content may be a legal risk to the campus due to poor accessibility. Mobile users—nearly 50% of the campus web audience—are especially frustrated by PDF usability. PDFs also make your site harder to maintain and organize, wasting site maintainer time.

Get Your PDFs Under Control

Step 1: Know what you’re working with.

Request a PDF Status Report from Web Services. This report includes a list of

  • unused PDFs (those not linked to by another Cascade site)
  • live PDFs hosted on your site sorted by accessibility score

Step 2: Clear the clutter.

Delete the PDFs identified as “unused” from Cascade. You can find a list of these PDFs in the “Unused PDFs” tab of your status report. 

This removes clutter and makes site maintenance easier—and prevents web users from finding old documents. If you need to keep any for internal reference, save a copy in Box and delete the file from Cascade.

Step 3: Make sure the rest of your PDFs are current, intended for printing by an external audience, and remediated.

You can find a list of these PDFs in the “PDF Scores” tab of your status report. Check each one and mark as delete, convert to webpage, move to Box, or convert to electronic form, or keep as PDF. Take the following actions for each PDF decision.

  • Delete: Archive/delete old and outdated PDFs that no longer need to be available to the public
  • Convert to webpage: Convert items that do not need to be printed out into a web page. Web Services can assist with this process
  • Move to Box: Store documents intended for an internal (on campus) audience in Box and link to them through your website.
  • Convert to electronic form:
  • Keep as PDF: Request free help remediating your remaining PDFs with scores below 0.9 by using the Content Accessibility support ticket.

Step 4: Keep up the good work.

  • Work with Accessible Technology and Services to create a more accessible source document/template for common communications such as meeting agendas and minutes. Request help using the Content Accessibility support ticket.
  • Request free remediation from Accessible Technology and Services prior to uploading new PDFs to Cascade by using the Content Accessibility support ticket.
  • Review your PDFs yearly.