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PDFs and documents

We avoid documents such as PDF and Word and publish information on web pages instead

Publishing information in documents makes our content harder to find, use and maintain.

We avoid documents because they:

  • are hard to read on mobile devices
  • don’t meet a range of accessibility needs, such as the ability to change colour or font size
  • take visitors away from the website
  • are difficult to find, use and keep up to date
  • lack context or supporting information if found via a search engine

We are working to significantly reduce the number of PDFs and documents on our website. If we need to publish PDFs and documents, we carry out work to make them accessible.

Alternatives to documents

Where possible we don’t use PDF, Word or other formats. We publish as HTML web pages instead.  

If you do need to publish a document, it should be in addition to an HTML version. 

Exceptions   

We consider publishing new documents if:   

  • there is a legal obligation to provide the information in a PDF or Word format on the website  
  • they are forms which need to be signed by hand for legal reasons   
  • they contain complex information and are impractical to turn into a web page. For example, policies, reports or strategies needed for transparency
  • there is a user need for the document to be in a printable format. (An HTML version should also be provided) 

Any documents published on plymouth.gov.uk must:  

  • have an evidenced user or business need   
  • be accessible
  • have a title that is descriptive and set in the file’s properties   
  • have a meaningful file name   
  • include supporting content on a web page with an overview of the document’s content 

The file name should:

  • be written in lowercase
  • use hyphens or underscores 
  • make sense out of context, for example, application-vehicle-registration-certificate.pdf

The file name should not include:

  • a version number, ‘draft’, ‘clean’ or ‘final’, unless those words are part of the document title
  • a date, unless the date is part of the document title, for example, a business plan for 2016 to 2017

M365 has a built in Accessibility checker so you can check the accessibility of documents.

Worcestershire County Council have produced some useful guidance about creating accessible documents. 

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