4.3 Use of PDF documents
The New Zealand Web Standards 2.0 were released in March 2009 and replace the previous version, the New Zealand Government Web Standards 1.0 (below). See Meeting the standards for more information.
The Standard
4.3 PDF is not considered an accessible format, however if PDF must be used to publish a document you must:
- Show the PDF version used (located in association with the PDF document, such that it is unambiguous as to which document the PDF version pertains). This is in addition to the requirement to show document type and size as stated in Standard 4.1, and
- If publishing in version 8 or greater, follow and adhere to the Acrobat Accessibility Guidelines.
- If the PDF version is the only version of the content on the web site i.e, it does not qualify under exemption point ii) of Standard 3.1, then adhere to the requirements for publishing non-accessible format documents in Standard 4.2.
Guide to this standard
Use of PDF alone for long documents or documents with specific, complex formatting intended for specialist audiences is strongly discouraged. However, if no HTML or Rich Text Format (rtf) version is provided, the Acrobat Accessibility Guidelines should be followed.
The agency is expected to provide as much detail as possible in the associated HTML summary of key points contained within a PDF. However, this can be, at a minimum, a sentence describing what the topic of the PDF is.
Rationale for this standard
PDF format has become a de-facto standard. However, it does have some accessibility issues. The extent of the accessibility issues is related to how the pdf document has been constructed. WebAim discusses some of the issues regarding accessibility of pdf documents in more depth.
