In website accessibility terms, PDFs are the devil - but just why are they so problematic? 🙅 Firstly, PDFs are rarely accessible for people using assistive technology like a screen reader. This means that a subsection of visitors to your website will be unable to read information you’ve provided. 🏔️ Another less well-known issue with PDFs is their size. PDFs can often run into the 10s of megabytes. This makes them costly to download for people accessing your website on mobile data. This can be another huge barrier for anyone trying to keep costs down. 📆 The third reason we’re not fans of PDFs on GP practice websites is that they can often lead to an information debt. Any PDFs left on a website will quickly go out of date, requiring constant maintenance to keep them current. This adds a huge workload to the team managing the website. So what can you do instead? 🔗 The first and easiest option is to provide links to other trusted sources like the NHS website. This means you don’t need to do anything to keep the information up to date other than check the link annually. ⌨️ If the information has to be on your website, writing it as plain text onto a page is the best way to ensure it’s accessible. Using correct heading hierarchy will ensure the page is easy to navigate for people accessing the website using assistive technology. 📁 If you absolutely have to provide a PDF file on your website, ensure it’s carefully constructed following the NHS content guide. Steps like using a logical structure based on tags and headings, good colour contrast and using alternative text for images are key to ensuring your PDF is usable. However careful you are, there is still no guarantee your PDF will be accessible: using plain HTML text is always best. Do yourself and your patients a favour and ditch PDFs in favour of plain text and links to external sources: it will save everyone a lot of time and stress. (fb)

Working with Digital Transformation Leads to update GP practice websites across the country is some of the most rewarding work we do. These incredible tech-savvy team members are at the forefront of the effort to digitise healthcare for patients at a PCN level. Thank you to Oliver in Kent for this fab feedback. #GPSurgeryNet #GPPracticeWebsite #DigitalTransformationLead (fb)