PDF & File Management Guidelines

Before uploading a PDF, ask yourself: could this content work as a web page instead?

Here's why we recommend web pages whenever possible:

• Accessibility: Web pages work better with screen readers and other assistive technologies. They're also easier to navigate for users with disabilities.
• Mobile experience: PDFs require pinching, zooming and awkward scrolling on phones and tablets. Web pages adapt automatically.
• Search visibility: Search engines rank web pages higher than PDFs, which means your content is more likely to be found.
• Maintenance: Updating a web page is straightforward. With PDFs, you have to upload a new file, update links and hope no one bookmarked the old version.
• Analytics: You can track how people use web pages through Google Analytics. PDFs only show downloads, so you can't evaluate how users actually engage with the content within.

If your content is text-heavy, gets updated regularly or is under a few pages long, it should almost always be a web page rather than a PDF.

Now is the time to audit the files on your site. Determine who in your department will lead this effort and who will contribute.

How to Get Started

1. Request a content export by submitting a ticket.
2. Evaluate all PDFs and other files on your site.
3. For each file, ask: Do I need this?

Decision Tree

About archive options 

1. The DOJ rule includes exceptions for archived web PDF content, meaning older documents that are no longer actively used can be preserved for historical reference without full remediation if they meet all four exceptions. This allows us to focus accessibility efforts on current content while maintaining access to historical records through the upcoming website PDF/Document Archive.
2. Alternatively, webmasters can review University Libraries Special Collections and Archives guidelines for transferring content. If the file(s) qualify, work with their team to transfer and then delete the file from your website, as well as any links leading to that file that is removed.

Initial Setup

• Pick pages to test: Start with the home page, then test key templates including top landing pages, a form page, a news/article page and a program/detail page.

Manual Testing

• Keyboard navigation: Press Tab through all interactive elements from the top of the page. Confirm you can reach everything clickable, focus indicators are clearly visible, tab order follows visual reading order and all buttons/menus/forms work from the keyboard. Test on both desktop and mobile/responsive views.
• Visual scan: Check for sufficient color contrast between text and background, proper text alignment and spacing with no overlapping content and verify headings that look like headings are actually marked up as headings.
• Zoom and reflow: Zoom to 400% and confirm content reflows without breaking layout and there's no horizontal scrolling for normal reading (tables and maps may be exceptions).

Image and Content Checks

• Alt text: Open Developer Tools/Inspector, select images and confirm meaningful alt attributes are present (or empty alt for decorative images).
• Heading structure: In DevTools, open the document outline or headings view. Confirm headings are present and properly nested with no skipped levels.
• Text spacing: Use a text spacing plugin to confirm that increasing spacing and font size doesn't break content or prevent users from reading and operating the page.

Automated Tool Checks

• Run multiple tools: Use WAVE to identify errors and check contrast and Siteimprove browser plugin to catch additional issues. Each tool finds different problems, so use more than one.
• Note: Automated tools can miss issues or report false positives. Always combine automated checks with manual testing.

Embedded Content

• Embeds and iframes: For Instagram feeds, framed widgets, videos and similar content - confirm you can tab into and out of the embed without getting trapped and that all controls are reachable and properly labeled.

If your site isn't hosted on www.kent.edu (e.g., custom applications or subdomains), it won't be included in our Siteimprove contract. However, there are free tools you can use to check for accessibility and SEO issues:

Manual keyboard testing - The easiest accessibility test: navigate your site using only a keyboard (TAB to move, ENTER/SPACE to activate). Focus should always be visible and move sequentially.

• Important reminder: Automated checkers won't verify if image alt text is truly descriptive, if content is responsive or if vendors are receptive to accessibility feedback.

Automated checkers

Siteimprove Browser Extension
A free browser plugin that scans for accessibility issues and highlights them directly on your page.

• Note: This tool focuses on accessibility only and doesn't include the customized dashboards available in the full Siteimprove product.

WAVE (Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool)
A browser plugin that checks for accessibility issues, structural information, tab order and color contrast. It also gives pages a score between 1-10.

• Note: A high score does not guarantee full accessibility - manual testing is always necessary.

Web Developer Tool
Makes it easy to view heading structure, show image alt text information and verify code.

Note: Automated checkers are not always accurate. Each tool will find different issues and sometimes miss what a manual check will catch, so it is important to combine manual and automated checks.

For Developers

Axe DevTools
A browser extension that connects to Developer Tools and runs accessibility checks directly in the code, providing guidance on how to fix issues.

Step 1: Create a New Policy in Siteimprove

1. Open Siteimprove.
2. Navigate to the Policies section in the left-hand menu.
3. Click the purple "Create Policy" button.

Step 2: Open the Content Policy Category

1. Once you are on the Policy Categories page, locate the "Content" tab at the top.
2. Select the tab labeled "Content."

Step 3: Add a Rule to Your Policy

1. Click the purple box with a "+" in the center to add a new rule to your policy.
2. From the drop-down menu that appears, select Link URL.

Step 4: Identify and Copy the URL Segment

1. Locate the full URL you want your policy to search for.
2. Copy only the part of the URL that comes immediately after kent.edu.
3. In this example, the portion you would copy is: /s3fs-root/s3fs-public/file/Weigle_ALISE%202016%20Poster.pdf

Step 5: Add the URL to Your Policy Rule

1. Paste the URL segment you copied into the Link URL field in your policy.
2. Set the first condition to "contains."
3. Set the second condition to "is exactly."
   • Using "contains" is usually sufficient, but I usually double-check accuracy by also adding the "is exactly" condition.

Step 6: Name and Create Your Policy

1. Enter a name for your policy in the Policy Name field.
2. Click the purple "Create Policy" button located in the bottom-right corner of your screen.

Step 7: Open Your Policy

1. Once your policy has finished running, locate it in the Policies list.
2. Click on the name of your policy to open it and view the results.

Step 8: Review Policy Results

1. After opening your policy, review the results that appear.
2. Click on any of the results to view more details.
   • In this example, there is only one result.

Step 9: Locate the Link in the Page HTML

1. Sometimes Siteimprove won't show the exact location of a link if it's embedded in text.
   • This is the case in this example.
2. To find the link on the page, click the "View HTML" button.
3. The HTML view will show exactly where the link exists on the page.
   • The text that the link is attached to is usually displayed just above the actual URL in the HTML.

Step 10: Make Adjustments on the Page

1. Navigate to the actual page where the policy result was found.
2. Make any necessary adjustments, such as removing the linked text or updating the link.

Sometimes a PDF is the right choice - for example, forms that need to be printed and filled out or official documents that require specific formatting.

When that's the case, make sure your PDF is accessible:

Before Converting to PDF

• Be sure your document has a relevant title
• Run accessibility checker in your source application
• Use proper heading structure (H1, H2, H3)
• Add alt text to all images
• Ensure text is searchable (avoid image-only scanned PDFs)

Content Requirements

• Use readable fonts and maintain good color contrast
• Write descriptive link text instead of "click here" or bare URLs
• Save with meaningful filenames that describe content
• Create tagged PDFs when exporting

Accessibility Resources

Software-Specific Guides

• Adobe Acrobat: Create and verify PDF accessibility
• Microsoft Word: Make your Word documents accessible
• Microsoft PowerPoint: Make your PowerPoint presentations accessible
• Adobe InDesign: Creating accessible PDFs

Standards & Testing

• Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)
• Color Contrast Analyzer

More Questions?

Register for Kent State trainings using the buttons at the bottom of this page.
 

Follow these steps to ensure files are completely removed from your site and won't still appear in search engine results:

1. Unpublish or edit any web page that links to the file.
2. Remove the file from your page content.
3. Delete the file node in Drupal.
4. Confirm that no other pages link to the file.
5. Contact us by submitting a ticket if you need help or if the file appears across multiple sites.

Broken links are a nearly inevitable side effect of this cleanup process.

Deleting a file node immediately breaks any link pointing to it. Archiving a file by converting it to the "File Archive" content type changes the node's URL structure — while internal links using the node ID path (e.g., /node/12345) should persist, any links pointing directly to the file path or permalink will break. Because we cannot predict how every file was linked across the CMS, body content, or external sources, you should assume some broken links will occur during conversion.

It is critical to repair these quickly to protect the visitor experience and prevent drops in search rankings.

Use your Siteimprove Quality Assurance report to identify and fix broken links as soon as they appear. Reminders will be sent every three weeks — please take action promptly when you receive them.