There are a lot of PDFs and Microsoft Word documents available to website visitors on UW websites. Often website visitors are not warned when links lead to PDFs or Word documents. It is very helpful to website visitors to clearly state when a link leads to a PDF or Word document.

This article will describe some recommendations and best practices for linking to Word and PDF documents.

Linking to a PDF

There are a couple of acceptable ways to warn website visitors that a link leads to a PDF. 

Example one:

Document name (PDF)

Example two:

Document name (PDF)

Both of these examples comply with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

There are benefits and drawbacks with each approach in the examples above.  But, I won’t get into these here. The key thing is to provide website visitors with a warning when a link leads to a PDF. And, picking a standard way for doing so across your website is also a good practice.

Linking to multiple document formats

If multiple formats are often provided on your website for a document, then there are a couple of acceptable ways to display the links.  These approaches comply with WCAG 2.0.

Example one:

Document name (PDF, Word)

Example two:

Document name (PDF), (Word)

Some notes about posting documents

In general, posting Word documents on websites is not recommended for a few reasons. The key reasons are that website visitors may not have Word on their computers, or may not have a compatible version of Word. If there is a good reason to post a Word document, consider saving it in an earlier-version format for posting.

It’s also worth noting that a significant number of website users do not open PDFs at all. Website visitors may not have the software installed to view PDFs. And most visitors who use assistive technologies avoid opening PDFs altogether because most PDFs are not created correctly to be accessible.

There is a lot of debate about if or when PDFs should be used on websites. But that’s the subject of another post or a few posts!

Aiding accessibility

When content may not be viewable or accessible because it is in a document format, then it is recommended to provide a standard-web-page equivalent (i.e. HTML equivalent) and/or to provide a contact for website visitors to contact via phone or email should they want or need more information about the document.