Internet Marketing - Matt Bailey [150]
Delays when trying to find information can be costly, because many users just don’t want to be bothered with waiting. However, when the PDF application starts, the user is locked in; they can’t stop it or leave.
The next problem comes as the user starts to look through the PDF. If it is interesting and has good content, there is often no immediate way for the user to get to the company website. This is because very few PDFs are built with hyperlinks embedded in the document, even though the hyperlink is a very valuable resource for users to get to the main website.
Most users will not edit the address bar of their web browser to get to the website, because they tend to rely on the Back button. When a user hits the Back button, they are now seeing the search engine results page again, with your result alongside competitive websites. You had them at your site, but they couldn’t get any further. This is how the PDF becomes a user trap.
Overcoming PDF Accessibility Obstacles
For many users, PDFs are much more frustrating than this. Because PDFs can also incorporate many images, they lack elements that websites include, such as alt text for images or document structure. Many screen readers are unable to handle PDFs if they are not “properly” constructed and can cause frustration. For many users, the only option is to upgrade their assistive software, at a potential cost of hundreds of dollars.
Creating an accessible PDF is not difficult and can be done by changing settings in the standard PDF creation, which is typically done using Adobe Acrobat. Creators can also test the accessibility of their PDF documents. The best means of creating an accessible PDF document, however, is to start with a tagged source file (discussed next). Starting with this, any device should be able to access the document. With accessibility, the benefit of creating accessible documents is that the documents are open to be read by multiple devices. PDAs and phones are included in this list.
Many of the issues are determined by how the PDF was created. If the document was scanned in as an image, then it will not be accessible or search-friendly. If the document was scanned in using Optical Character Recognition (OCR), then the text that was recognized will be available to assistive technology devices and search engines, but there will be no markup tags to communicate the headings, links, images, and other text attributes.
If a PDF was created in a graphics program, then it becomes a bit more complicated. Text fields added into the document and populated with text will most likely be readable. Text in the form of art or images, which usually are headlines or titles or other important text areas, tend not to be translated into readable text by a search engine or screen reader.
Fortunately, tagged document formats are included in Adobe programs and Microsoft Office. The most basic explanation of tagging is that the document has an underlying structure such as header information, text and graphic display commands, and alt attributes, similar to a web page. Using preset or custom styles such as Headline 1, Heading 2, Heading 3, paragraph, unordered list, bulleted list, and other commands will structure your document similar to a web page and allow it to be structured for accessibility and better search engine friendliness. Each style is a “tag” that is carried through the document, its creation as a PDF, and its subsequent reading by a search engine or other document “reading” program. The tags create a logical order and structure to your document, which allows the reader to follow the document as the author intended. A tagged format also allows a PDF document to be reflowed. Reflow is an important consideration for those who have to resize the document for readability and for viewing on handheld devices. Reflow allows content to be structured for viewing without horizontal