Stop Hosting PDFs on Your Government Website. Here Is What to Do Instead.
The PDF felt like the safe choice. It preserves the layout, it prints cleanly, it is what the department has always done. It is also the reason a resident using a screen reader cannot read your budget, and the reason your site search returns nothing useful.
This is not an argument against PDFs. It is an argument against using a PDF as the primary home for content the public needs to read. Some documents genuinely have to stay files. Most do not, and treating every document like it does is how agencies end up with a backlog they cannot fix by hand.
1What a Hosted PDF Actually Costs You
Invisible to search
A resident searches for "leaf collection schedule" and gets nothing, because the answer is on page 14 of a PDF your site search never indexed as content.
Unreadable on a phone
A fixed-width letter page forces pinch-and-zoom on the device most residents use to reach you.
Closed to screen readers
An untagged or scanned PDF has no headings, no reading order, and no alt text. Assistive technology gets a wall.
A compounding liability
Under DOJ ADA Title II, every untagged document is exposure, and the archive grows every year.
2The Documents You Should Keep as Files
To be fair to the PDF: some content belongs in one. Keep a file when the document is a signed legal record, an official form built for print, or something that must preserve an exact fixed layout. Those get tagged and remediated, not converted. Everything else is a candidate to become a page.
3What to Do Instead: Publish the Page
For content people read, rebuild it as a real web page and keep the original PDF as a download. The content becomes searchable, mobile friendly, translatable, and editable by the department that owns it, without a new export cycle every time a fee changes.
4Answering the Objections
"But we need the exact layout."
Keep the PDF as a download for anyone who wants it. The page carries the content; the file preserves the layout. You lose nothing.
"Records requirements say we must keep the file."
And you do. Converting does not delete the PDF. It attaches it to the page, so citations and retention still hold.
"We do not have time to rebuild hundreds of documents."
You do not rebuild them by hand. A converter extracts the structure, and you approve it. Start with the high-traffic documents that matter most.
Final Takeaway
Keep the files that have to be files. Publish everything else as a page, with the PDF still available to download. That single shift fixes search, mobile, and accessibility in one move, and it is the difference between a document library residents can use and one they quietly give up on.
See how many of your PDFs should be pages
A free scan shows every PDF on your site and how much of it residents are actually trying to read.
Run a Free PDF Audit