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Documents published on GOV.UK must meet the GDS accessibility standards and this includes all PDF documents.

Why we prefer HTML web pages to PDFs

As a rule, all new content to the PHE website should be published as HTML web pages (where HTML stands for 'Hyper Text Markup Language', the code most web pages are created in). 

Read our guide on the benefits of HTML compared to PDFs. 

PDFs must be accessible

But if you do need to publish content as a PDF:

  1. make sure you're using the new PHE template and follow the guidance in our How to use the new PHE template guide
  2. save it as a PDF/A

What is the PDF/A format?

The PDF/A format was developed for the archiving and long-term preservation of electronic documents. The A stands for archiving.

Its distinguishing feature is that saving as a PDF/A forces the document to be 100% self-contained. The PDF does not rely on any external programs or elements for it to run. PDFs which do so risk becoming inoperable as the dependent softwares evolve.

From an accessibility point of view, the PDF/A format is designed 'to increase the accessibility of conforming files for physically impaired users by allowing assistive software, such as screen readers, to more precisely extract and interpret a file's contents'.

So saving our PDFs as PDF/As is a good first step to making PHE's PDFs more accessible.

How to create a PDF/A in Microsoft Word

In a Word document, click the File tab at the top left

Then select Save as... from the menu.

Under the title field, click the format field to open a dropdown menu of possible formats and select PDF.

If you now clicked Save the Word doc would save as a basic PDF.

To make it save as a PDF/A, click Options under the title and format fields.

This opens the Options dialogue box.

  1. Tick the PDF/A compliant box.
  2. Make sure the Document structure tags for accessibility box is ticked.

Click OK to return to the Print page and click Save to create a PDF/A. 

You should only need to do this once and Word should remember your preference, but it may be worth checking from time to time that the PDF/A box is still ticked.

What does 'document structure tags for accessibility' mean?

Tagging is essential for PDF accessibility.

It is the tags in a PDF which establish the logical reading order and indicate structure and type, arranging the order in which screenreaders read out PDF content. At its simplest, tags indicate which text is in headings, in bulletpoint lists, in alt text and so on.

Therefore it is very important for accessibility that a PDF is correctly 'tagged'.

A first step towards doing this is making sure that, when you save a Word document as a PDF, you carry over all the tagging (titles, headings, lists, tables, captions, all the formatting) from the source Word document.

Ticking the 'document structure tags for accessibility' tickbox ensures that all the tagging in the Word doc is carried over into the new PDF/A.

However, both these steps do not, by themselves, ensure that a new PDF meets WCAG 2.0 accessibility standards. That requires further checking.


Note:

If you have selected Minimise size to create a PDF with a smaller file size, make sure to check that the 'Document structure' box is still ticked.

This is because minimising the size of a document can sometimes uncheck the Document structure tick box.

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