Creating Accessible Web Content

Creating accessible content on your website not only serves those using assistive technology, but creates a better experience for all of our website users. As noted in the "Guidance on Title II Accessibility Deadline" letter from the Chancellor, we still have important work to do in creating accessible digital content on campus, and making sure our websites are compliant is a big part of that.

UNL CMS and all of its included content types and components have code compliance and accessibility built in. PDFs are often convenient for sharing documents, but they can create real challenges for user experience and accessibility.

From a usability standpoint, PDFs are not designed for easy reading on smaller screens. Users frequently have to zoom in and out, scroll horizontally, or struggle with text that doesn’t adapt to different screen sizes, especially on mobile devices. Navigation can also be difficult, with limited ability to quickly scan, search, or jump between sections compared to a well-structured web page.

Accessibility is an even bigger concern. Most PDFs are not properly tagged, which means screen readers can’t interpret them correctly. This makes it difficult or impossible for people who rely on assistive technologies to understand the content. Elements like headings, lists, tables, and reading order are often lost or misrepresented. Images without alternative text and scanned documents that aren’t OCR-processed further block access.

In contrast, accessible web content is designed to be flexible, responsive, and compatible with assistive tools. It allows users to adjust text size, navigate with a keyboard, and consume content in ways that suit their needs. Whenever possible, important content should be offered in accessible web pages or webforms rather than relying on PDFs.

File Upload Access

User roles who CAN upload files including PDFs

  • Site Admin

User roles who CANNOT upload files including PDFs

  • Editor
  • Viewer

Web Page or PDF?

Web Page or Webform

In most cases, adding content to your website should be in the form of actual web pages or web forms. If you're starting with a basic document in Word or other text-editing software, simply creating a new Builder or Book page, then copying and pasting the content from your document into the WYSIWYG editor will give you a web page that should require only minor formatting changes before publishing. This includes documents like: 

If you have content with more photos and design elements, instead of PDF-first, think about how that content can be presented using components within a Builder page. This includes documents like:

Instead of using fillable PDFs for collecting data from website users, a Webform is almost always a better option. 

PDF

As a last resort, PDFs can be uploaded to UNL CMS sites and linked by those with Site Admin access. PDFs uploaded to UNL CMS sites must meet accessibility guidelines. More information on creating accessible PDFs can be found below.