PDF: From problematic documents to fully accessible

PDFs remain one of the most common and most problematic content types on higher education websites. In this presentation, we'll explore how inaccessible, outdated and improperly used PDFs negatively impact your website and how you can pivot accordingly. Drawing from real-world projects, we'll walk through how we partner with campus stakeholders to evaluate and manage PDF content at scale. You will learn how to identify which documents should be removed, remediated or converted into web pages, and why encouraging web-first content benefits users, search engines and AI-powered discovery tools alike. We'll discuss strategies for communicating with campus partners and content owners about PDFs on their sites, including the importance of cleaning up legacy documents, avoiding improperly linked PDFs, and reducing user confusion and misinformation. The session will also cover how PDFs interact with AI and SEO, and how inaccessible documents limit the effectiveness of emerging technologies. From an implementation perspective, we'll share how we scope and price PDF-related work and when DIY solutions may or may not be appropriate.