Publishing PDF and office documents

Understand the requirements for publishing PDF and office documents that meet the New Zealand Goverment Web Accessibility Standard.

Insufficient accessibility support

PDF and office documents (such as Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint) lack sufficient accessibility support across commonly used applications, assistive technologies (AT), operating systems and devices to be reliably accessible for a general public audience.

For more on accessibility support, see the Knowledge Area: Accessibility supported technologies.

Publishing requirements

On publicly facing websites

Only provide PDF and office documents on a publicly facing website if there is a user need or legislative requirement — for example, the document acts as the authoritative version of a document also provided in accessible HTML.

To meet the NZ Government Web Accessibility Standard, a PDF or office document published on a publicly facing website must:

On internally facing websites

In a closed environment, it is possible to ensure that all users have the technologies they need to support an accessible experience with a PDF or office document.

To enable an accessible experience for users and meet the NZ Government Web Accessibility Standard, the documents must:

PDF and office documents published on an internally facing website do not require an accessible HTML version. However, many disabled people may still find HTML versions of the content more accessible.

The NZ Government Web Usability Standard requires that links to non-HTML files include the file’s format and size. For more, see Linking to non-HTML files — Usability — Digital.govt.nz.

Applying WCAG to non-web documents

Strictly speaking, WCAG applies only to web content in web pages. But most of WCAG 2.1 Level A and AA Success Criteria can also be applied to non-web documents. Such an approach is described in the W3C’s document, Guidance on Applying WCAG 2.0 to Non-Web Information and Communications Technologies (WCAG2ICT).

PDF and office documents are generally considered non-web documents. Users normally download and open them in a standalone application, such as Microsoft Word or another viewer application.

However, in some scenarios, PDF and office documents do open in a web browser. For instance, some browsers have built-in functionality to display a PDF, or there is a plugin to do the same. Microsoft 365 Office documents also might open in a browser if, for example, they are accessed from a Microsoft SharePoint website — this is typical with corporate intranets.

Authors typically do not control the way that users view a PDF or office document. All that authors can do is make sure the document conforms to accessibility requirements.

EN 301 549 for non-web documents

The European Standard, EN 301 549 Accessibility requirements for ICT products and services, is informed by the WCAG2ICT guidance. It applies a subset of WCAG 2.1 Success Criteria as the accessibility requirements for non-web documents. See Section 10 Non-web documents — EN 301 549 v3.2.1 — ETSI (PDF, 2.2MB).

Creating PDF and office documents that meet the requirements in Section 10 of EN 301 549 will help ensure that they are accessible to users.

Which WCAG 2 Success Criteria apply to non-web documents?

In EN 301 549, there are 4 WCAG 2.1 Success Criteria at Level A and AA that do not apply to non-web documents:

All of the remaining WCAG 2.1 Level A and AA Success Criteria still apply to non-web documents and are included in EN 301 549.