Should all downloadable documents(word doc, ppt, pdf etc) in an website be accessible to meet WCAG?

Question

Should all downloadable documents(word doc, ppt, pdf etc) in an website be accessible to meet WCAG? If yes, which is the closest WCAG rule this can be mapped to?

Answer 1

Should all downloadable documents(word doc, ppt, pdf etc) in an website be accessible to meet WCAG?

All documents on a website need to be accessible in order to comply with WCAG.

Now you mentioned lots of different document types so the process is different for each.

For example for PDFs you may want to read PDF techniques for WCAG 2.0 (I can't find the 2.1 version).

For Word Documents you may want to read this WebAim article on accessible Word Documents..

There is a lot to learn for each document type so I would suggest focusing on each document type at a time (start with PDFs as they are most likely to have major issues that are easy to fix) and learn how to test each one.

If yes, which is the closest WCAG rule this can be mapped to?

There isn't a single rule to map to I am afraid, nearly all of them apply.

For example, if you have a video in your PowerPoint presentation it should have captions.

Correct heading structure is essential, etc.

The thing is that the techniques are slightly different for each type of document.

If you want the core ones to focus on (some may not be applicable to each document type, i.e. video in a PDF) I would suggest the following subset of WCAG Level A, as these are the essential ones:-

1.1.1 – Non-text Content Provide text alternatives for non-text content

1.2.1 – Audio-only and Video-only (Pre-recorded) Provide an alternative to video-only and audio-only content

1.2.2 – Captions (Pre-recorded) Provide captions for videos with audio

1.2.3 – Audio Description or Media Alternative (Pre-recorded) Video with audio has a second alternative

1.3.1 – Info and Relationships Logical structure

1.3.2 – Meaningful Sequence Present content in a meaningful order

1.3.3 – Sensory Characteristics Use more than one sense for instructions

1.4.1 – Use of Colour Don’t use presentation that relies solely on colour

1.4.2 – Audio Control Don’t play audio automatically

2.1.1 – Keyboard Accessible by keyboard only

2.2.2 – Pause, Stop, Hide Provide user controls for moving content

2.3.1 – Three Flashes or Below No content flashes more than three times per second

2.4.3 – Focus Order Logical order

2.4.4 – Link Purpose (In Context) Every link’s purpose is clear from its context

A workaround that is often easier

Having someone create accessible PDFs, Word Documents etc. tends to be something that easily gets forgotten.

What we do is convert them to HTML documents (well actually we create them in HTML first and convert to PDF) that can be viewed and have a line in our accessibility policy that explains that not all PDFs, Word Docs etc. are accessible but an HTML alternative is available.

We then link to the HTML version first with a download button. Or if it is a document as part of a lead capture process we may let them download the PDF and have the first line a link to the HTML version "There is an accessible HTML version of this document available at [URL], this document may not be fully accessible."

While not the perfect way to do it, it is the most maintainable way we have found over time.

It is also a lot easier to copy and paste documents into a document cleaner such as wordhtml.com and fix the HTML than it is to fix some very poorly structured PDFs and Word Documents.

Powerpoint is where this technique would not work well but it should work for yur PDFs and Word Docs at least.

As a final bonus, search engines can index the content a lot better so you get better rankings for the content.