As of September 2019 all documents uploaded to our website need to be accessible to adhere to our obligations under the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and mobile Applications) Accessibility Regulations 2018 and related legislation.
We want to limit the amount of documents that are present on the website, to only those strictly necessary to ensure users access the information they need in a consistent format to improve their user experience.
If a document includes important information for your audience, it is often best to add this information to your webpage rather than in an additional format. In some cases the use of supplementary documents cannot be avoided. This page describes how to correctly label your supplementary materials and ensure that they are accessible themselves. Documents submitted for approval that are not accessible will not be approved to appear on the website and it is the responsibility of the editor submitting the document to ensure it is made accessible.
For internally focussed documents you should consider using our approved document templates.
Choosing your document format
If it is not appropriate to publish your content as a HTML webpage then the most appropriate format is an accessible Word document. Documents should only be published as a PDF file in very specific circumstances - where doing so retains structural integrity and visual layout. Often it is very difficult to make PDFs fully accessible, in this case you should publish an accessible word document variant alongside the PDF document.
Correctly labelling your materials
When providing supplementary materials, you need to:
- Clearly indicate the type of document the user will be downloading (such as PDF, Word, Excel, PPT) and state the size of the document following the link text, e.g. Read our Course handbook (PDF 50KB). This is important as many of our visitors to the site will be accessing the site via their mobile phones and may not want to open large files.
- Provide a summary of the document’s contents on the web page, so that the user knows what they will be opening.
Key areas to consider when creating documents
- You should use the ‘Title’ style for the title of the document rather than large or bold font.
- Use headings to help users navigate the page rather than different size fonts. ‘Heading 1’ should be used for the main sections, ‘Heading 2’ for sub-headings, ‘Heading 3’ for sub-sections within the sub-headings and ‘Normal’ for body text.
- Provide descriptive alternative text for any images, tables or graphs used. The alternative text should provide a clear description of what the image, table or graph represents.
- Never rely on colour to convey meaning as some people may not be able to distinguish differences in colour.
- Ensure you use a large enough font 12pt is a recommended minimum.
- Use a ‘sans serif’ font such as Arial or Calibri.
Ensuring your PDF and Office documents are accessible
If you are providing supplementary materials, you need to ensure they are accessible themselves. On Microsoft Office documents, such as Word or Powerpoint, this is straightforward. On PDF, this is only possible when using Acrobat Pro. LinkedIn Learning provides a useful set of videos to help you create accessible Microsoft documents. Video – Creating Accessible Documents in Microsoft Office.
Running an accessibility check on Microsoft Office
Simply type in 'accessibility checker' into the search bar and follow Office's suggestions or select File > Check for issues > Check Accessibility. Note that the suggestions explained under 'Additional information' show you how to fix any issues that Office has found.
Running an accessibility check on PDF
Unfortunately, to check the accessibility of a PDF you require Acrobat Pro, which is a paid software. If you do not have access to Acrobat Pro, you have two options depending on where you got the PDF from:
- If you created the PDF from an Office document yourself, you will need to go back to the original Office document and check the accessibility of this using the steps outlined above. Once the Office document is accessible, you can then either re-load the document to Contensis as an Office file or export it back to a PDF (see section below).
- If you received the PDF from elsewhere, you must ask the developer of the PDF to check its accessibility before you can use it. In the case where you do not know where the PDF originated from and you do not have access to Acrobat Pro to check its accessibility, you cannot use the PDF.
Converting a Word DOC to a PDF
The way in which you convert your word document to a PDF has an impact on the accessibility of the PDF. Note, you should be using at least Word 2010 on Windows to successfully export your accessibility changes to PDF.
When your Word document is fully accessible, the accessibility changes you have made can still be lost if you convert the file by 'printing to PDF'. Instead, when converting a DOC to a PDF, you should always 'save as' file type '.PDF'. Before saving, select 'options' and ensure that 'document structure tags for accessibility' is selected (Windows). On Mac, you need to ensure that 'best for electronic distribution and accessibility' is selected.
Find out more on Microsoft's page on exporting accessible Word documents to PDF.
Useful resources
To summarise
Any documents that fail to meet accessibility regulations will not be approved to go live on the website. As the editor submitting the document it is your responsibility to ensure the document you are submitting meets the requirements.
If you have any questions regarding Office and PDF accessibility, contact your department Web Lead or Marketing team, or the Digital Channel Management Team. Once you have ensured that your documents are fully accessible, you must continue to carry out the remaining manual accessibility checks under the accessibility checklist to ensure you meet all the accessibility guidelines.