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1. #HOW TO DO PDF SEARCH PDF#
2. #HOW TO DO PDF SEARCH DRIVER#
3. #HOW TO DO PDF SEARCH OFFLINE#
4. #HOW TO DO PDF SEARCH DOWNLOAD#

Operating systems, browsers and devices all work slightly differently and so do the wide variety of assistive technologies such as screen readers, magnifiers and literacy software.

#HOW TO DO PDF SEARCH PDF#

It takes time to do this properly.Įven if this work is done according to best practice, there’s still no guarantee that PDF content will meet the accessibility needs of users and their technology. For example, it 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. The accessibility of a PDF depends on how it was created. PDFs generally require a lot of zooming in and out and scrolling to read the content on a mobile phone They can be hard for some users to access

#HOW TO DO PDF SEARCH DOWNLOAD#

It’s also worth remembering that although many devices and browsers have PDF viewers built-in - and they are freely available to download - there are still users who do not have them, or cannot download them.

Without the context of the site the PDF is hosted on, they can’t easily browse to related content or search the website. This is even more of an issue if the user goes directly to the PDF from a search engine. This means they lose the context of the website and its navigation, making it harder for them to go back if they need to. Whatever happens, the user is taken away from the website when they open a PDF. Sometimes they automatically download to the user's device. They cause difficulties for navigation and orientationĭepending on the user’s device and browser, PDFs might open in a new browser window, new tab or a separate app. This makes it harder to identify issues or find ways to make improvements. In addition, we cannot get data about how users have interacted with a PDF – for example how long they’ve viewed it for or what links they’ve followed. We can get data on how many times a PDF has been downloaded from GOV.UK, but we cannot measure views of the file offline. We cannot get as much information from analytics about how people are using PDFs.

#HOW TO DO PDF SEARCH OFFLINE#

A PDF document that was created for offline use will not suit the context of the web and is likely to result in a poor user experience. People read differently on the web, so it’s really important to create content that is clear, concise, structured appropriately and focused on meeting the user need. They’re not designed for reading on screens This is especially troublesome with long documents and on small devices like mobile phones. They generally require a lot of zooming in and out, and scrolling both vertically and horizontally. However, PDFs are not designed to be flexible in their layout. On a responsive website like GOV.UK, content and page elements shift around to suit the size of the user’s device and browser. Problems with PDFs They do not change size to fit the browser We hope this post will help publishers explain the problems with PDFs to their colleagues and support moving towards an HTML-first culture. If you can’t avoid publishing a PDF, ideally it should be in addition to an HTML version and the PDF must meet accessibility standards and archiving standards. The default should be to create all content in HTML. We’ve heard from GOV.UK publishers and we know there are pressures that can make it difficult to avoid using PDFs. However, we still have around 200,000 PDFs on GOV.UK and we’re publishing tens of thousands of new ones each month.

#HOW TO DO PDF SEARCH DRIVER#

For example, the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) blogged about how it created and published its strategy in HTML and Public Health England has written about its work to move away from PDFs.Ĭontent managed by the GOV.UK team in GDS is entirely in HTML and the training, guidance and tools we provide for publishers encourage HTML by default.

Many departments are doing great work to move away from them. More importantly, unless created with sufficient care PDFs can often be bad for accessibility and rarely comply with open standards. GOV.UK exists to make government services and information as easy as possible to find and use.įor that reason, we're not huge fans of PDFs on GOV.UK.Ĭompared with HTML content, information published in a PDF is harder to find, use and maintain.