Web content, which includes documents on your website, needs to be accessible. This means that disabled users must be able to navigate your website, forms and PDFs without human help.

According to the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) by January 1, 2021, all designated public sector organizations and large organizations’ (more than 50 people) websites and web content must conform with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 Level AA.

With the common goal of providing an international, single, shared standard for web content accessibility, WCAG was developed by the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).

These guidelines help make web content more accessible to people with disabilities. This includes text, images, and sounds, as well as technical code that defines structure, presentation, etc.

PDFs are often overlooked with respect to accessibility. Nevertheless, they must still be compliant with WCAG.

PDF files tend to be produced by someone other than the website developers or administrators. They also represent a huge volume of the documents that site visitors use every day.