How to Create a Web-Ready PDF
Alert
STOP! Does your content need to be a PDF?
Web content owners are responsible for ensuring their documents and web content are accessible to persons with disabilities. The first thing to ask yourself before creating a document is: "Does this content need to be in PDF format?" Only use PDFs when your document is longer than 5 pages.
Content for the web should be created in the WebCMS. When developing content for the web, agencies should default to creating accessible webpages.
PDF (Portable Document Format) is a widely used file format for presenting documents electronically that look exactly like the printed originals. PDF is an ISO standard.
In order to make a good, web-ready PDF, follow these steps. Skip to Step 4 if the document is already a PDF:
- Determine whether PDF is the correct format
- Prepare your document for conversion to PDF
- Convert document to PDF
- Add PDF metadata (required)
- Set other Document Properties
- Make large documents user-friendly
- Make PDF accessible
- Reduce file size (optional)
- Upload PDF to WebCMS
1. Determine whether PDF is the correct format
Use a PDF rather than an HTML page or other document format if:
- The document is longer than five pages,
- you need to preserve the formatting or layout of the original document (e.g. for printing), or
- you need to publish a paper document for which no electronic version exists.
Make certain that the PDF you are publishing does not exist elsewhere. If it does exist elsewhere, link to it instead of uploading a duplicate. See Linking to EPA Publications in the National Service Center for Environmental Publications (NSCEP) and How to Link to Official Documents from the Government Publishing Office (GPO).
2. Prepare your document for conversion to PDF
Keep the format as simple as you can and use styling built into the word processor. This makes it easier to tag the document for accessibility. For example:
- Avoid placing graphics, text or tables side by side.
- Use standard non-serif fonts such as Arial, Aptos, or Calibri. Do not use serif fonts like Times New Roman because the serifs can appear blurry to people with low vision or contrast issues.
- Use built-in MS Word styles, such as Heading 1, Heading 2, etc.
- Use the MS Word function for creating bulleted and numbered lists rather than formatting list items manually.
- Use tabs and columns rather than spaces and tables for laying out your text.
Check document links to make sure they will work after converting to PDF:
- All links to websites (URLs) in your document must include the protocol, https://, or they will not be converted into active links in your PDF (example: https://www.epa.gov)
- Keep link text on one line. Links that wrap to a second line will not be converted into active links in your PDF. (Note: If a URL wraps to a second line and is hyperlinked in MS Office, the hyperlink will convert correctly.)
For more information about linking and PDFs, see Web Standard - PDF Links
Add alternative text to images
Alternative text is read out loud by screen readers and is therefore helpful to visually impaired users. To add alternative text in Word:
- Right click the image.
- Select Edit Alt Text
- Fill in alternative text
Creating hyperlinks in a PDF that point within the EPA
It is not recommended to create a hyperlink to point to a page in the PDF. When a PDF or page is deleted from the WebCMS, the hyperlinks will no longer be valid. On a wider scale, all those type of links will break when we update the WebCMS.
Creating hyperlinks in a PDF that point outside the EPA
Check document links to make sure they will work after converting to PDF:
- All links to websites (URLs) in your document must include the protocol, https://, or they will not be converted into active links in your PDF (example: https://www.epa.gov)
- Keep link text on one line. Links that wrap to a second line will not be converted into active links in your PDF. (Note: If a URL wraps to a second line and is hyperlinked in MS Office, the hyperlink will convert correctly.)
For more information about linking and PDFs, see Web Standard - PDF Links
3. Convert document to PDF
If you are creating the PDF from an MS Office application, choose the Acrobat Tab located underneath the header (on the far right of the home tab) choose Preferences and click the following boxes: Create Bookmarks, Add Links, and Enable Accessibility and Reflow with tagged Adobe PDF. If this is not available use: Save as > PDF (use default settings check box which include, open file after publishing and optimize for online and printing).
Add file name and choose location the file should be stored. (Do not use File > Print > Adobe PDF unless the Adobe PDF menu is unavailable in your authoring software. You lose the document metadata and do not retain bookmarks if you use this method.)
4. Add PDF Metadata
Metadata is important for search and content maintenance. PDFs are required to have metadata added to the document before uploading it to the web. All www content is required to have metadata. Information about how to add metadata to PDFs offline is provided by Adobe Acrobat help: PDF Properties and Metadata.
For Agency specific guidelines on how to format PDF metadata, read the guidelines on Required Metadata for PDF Documents.
Note: When adding PDF metadata using Acrobat, the Subject field contains the Description metadata.
5. Set other Document Properties
Besides metadata, check two other settings in the Adobe Acrobat Document Properties Window:
- Show Document Title
- Choose File > Document Properties (or press Ctrl-D)
- Select the Initial View tab
- Make sure Document Title is selected in the “Show” drop-down box. If File Name is selected instead, browsers may show the filename instead of the document title.
- Set Language Designation
- Choose File > Document Properties (or press Ctrl-D)
- Select the Advanced tab
- Select the language in the Language drop-down menu.
6. Make long documents user-friendly
Long documents pose two main kinds of problems: (1) A person may not want or be able to download a really large file, or may only be interested in a part of the document. (2) It can be easy to get lost in a long document. For most people, flipping to the page you want is easier in a paper document than in a PDF.
There are two ways to make large documents more user-friendly:
- Add bookmarks to your documents. You can do this using Word before you convert it. You can also do it in Adobe Acrobat afterwards. See How to Add PDF Bookmarks
- Break up the document into chunks (Only if the document is 50MB or greater)
7. Make PDF accessible
Making PDFs accessible is part of EPA's compliance with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act and it is required for all PDFs posted on EPA.gov. PDFs generate a picture of how a printed document looks. This is extremely useful when you need to preserve the look of a document, whether because of graphics and design or because of official pagination and formatting. Unfortunately, because a PDF is a picture of a page of text rather than actual text, PDFs are not inherently accessible to visually impaired people or search engines.
Adobe Acrobat Help has resources about how to make your PDFs accessible:
A note about scanned documents
EPA does not recommend scanning paper documents to post on the Web. You’ll get better accessibility results with electronic PDF conversion (Convert to Adobe PDF or Print to Adobe PDF). Scanned documents are images instead of text, so anyone using assistive technologies will not be able to "see" the document unless you use Paper Capture in Adobe Acrobat or some other Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
What about using a scanned image of a person's signature?
We often make documents available electronically to satisfy the e-FOIA requirements. Attorneys preparing for court are frequent requesters of EPA records and may need a copy of the signature page. Keep in mind that the web version of these documents would be courtesy copies, while the original with the signature is on file.
Some methods for making scanned or locked PDFs more accessible:
- Don’t scan a document to include a signature. Use /s/ or "original signed by" as a way to indicate a hard copy signature is on file. Ex: /s/ Charles Bert or Original signed by Charles Bert.
- In cases where the record(s) has been requested three times or more or when the agency anticipates the documents may be requested frequently, we should scan only the signature page.
- It is especially important to add metadata to a scanned PDF, and use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) on it.
- Export an electronically signed and locked PDF to Word, and then re-export it to PDF. This new version will contain the e-signature graphic and will allow you to add metadata and ensure other accessibility requirements are met.
8. Reduce file size (optional)
The best way to reduce the file size of a PDF document is to use the PDF Optimizer tool in Adobe Acrobat. See Adobe Acrobat Help: Optimizing PDFsfor information about how to reduce the file size of your document.
9. Upload PDF to the WebCMS
Once you are set up with the WebCMS, follow the guidance on how we add files to pages to post your PDF. Further training about posting PDFs can be found in WebCMS Training.