There's often a desire to link to a print layout in PDF format from a page to provide additional details or a print-like experience to your patrons This can lead to poor non-compliant digital practices, however. There's several things you want to consider when embedding content as a PDF on your site.
ADA Accessibility
Many screen readers and assistive devices can't read PDF content. To be ADA compliant, PDFs should be a supplementary experience of the same content that appears on the page itself. This is particularly important with any products, tickets, or educational programs that you sell. If a user cannot access the purchase flow of a product because it's only available in a PDF, this is not ADA compliant and can lead to litigation because you haven't allowed certain audience members to access your programming. We recommend that any critical content be duplicated in a page of your website and then supplemented with a PDF download for users that want to save or print information for later.
For more on ADA Best Practices, see this article.
Usability
Typically you'll want to set up a button or promo for your PDF link to make a clear click action for the user rather than a text link. This helps the download be easier to find and a clearer call to action, and also provides some ADA compliance benefits in that it clearly titles the content.
Step-by-Step
- Go to Media >> Add New
- Drag your PDF into the square to upload it.
- After uploading, click "Edit"
- In the top right corner, select the File URL and copy it to your clipboard.
- Edit your page.
- Paste your link and replace the link in the following button code with the PDF URL:
[button label='Download PDF' link='https://yourdomain.com/link/to.pdf' color='primary'] - Save your page.
Typically you'll want the download button to be at the bottom of a page that supplements the PDF information - this makes downloading the PDF an optional method of saving the information for users who prefer it.