WCAG and ETD PDFs

[Jason Skoog]

Hello,

As you may be aware, public universities will soon have to comply with new WVAG  guidelines (Web Content Accessibility). I believe private universities may have different expectations. I'm not entirely clear on the distinction.

How does this factor into ETDs that are PDFs? Do they need to be formatted a certain way, like using certain header styles?

I know in HTML, you need to use headers on your page in a particular order. This helps screen headers navigate a heading list, and skim through the content. I'm not sure if something like this is also required for ETD PDFs.

My understanding is that archival content may be exempt, but going forward with new ETDs, is there anything we need to consider?

[Rhonda Marker]

Hi Jason,

I wouldn't try to apply HTML rules to a PDF. A similar scenario in a PDF would be reading order. Some ETD content that might deserve special attention would be a table of contents, lists of figures, tables, and illustrations, and any page that contains both text and non-text (e.g., figures). Depending on the type of document (Word, PDF, LaTeX), either built-in accessibility checkers or external apps can check for these things, and most of them have functionality to "fix" them.

Rhonda

Rhonda Marker (she/her)

Head, Open Knowledge Strategies

Rutgers University Libraries

169 College Ave.

New Brunswick, NJ 08901

848-932-6127

Currently reading: That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America / by Amanda Jones (Bloomsbury, 2024)

---

From: Jason Skoog <jaskoo...@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, February 3, 2026 2:50 PM
To: ETD <e...@ndltd.org>
Subject: [etd] WCAG and ETD PDFs

 

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "ETD" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to etd+uns...@ndltd.org.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/a/ndltd.org/d/msgid/etd/f0a77ac7-1d85-4cce-ab70-6053ae0c8428n%40ndltd.org.