New PDF Policy

By GIC Published on November 17th, 2025

Last updated on November 17th, 2025

One of the biggest sources of accessibility problems on our state agency websites comes from the tens of thousands of legacy PDFs that have been posted over the years.

We wanted to drop a quick note here today about a new GIC policy aimed at addressing the PDF problem as it pertains to new website submissions.

PDF icon showing a document with a red arrow

As part of our maintenance of the sites we support, we regularly post PDFs that have been submitted by agencies through our Website Maintenance Request Form. If you make that request from here on out, you’ll see the following message:

The GIC can only post PDFs that have been checked for accessibility compliance. Please use this reference if unsure: https://gic.delaware.gov/accessible-pdfs/

You will also be asked to confirm that you have checked for accessibility.

Screenshot of question confirming accessibility has been checked before a PDF is submitted.

If a PDF is submitted to us that does not pass basic accessibility standards, we will reach out to the agency that submitted it to explain that it needs to be remediated before we can post it. Other options to consider at that point include converting your PDF into a new webpage or adding the information to an existing page.

This policy won’t address older PDFs for which each agency must still take responsibility, but we hope it will help prevent bad habits from continuing!

Next week, this blog will take a look at a wild and controversial notion: That EVERYONE in your agency should be contributing to the accessibility effort! We’ve got some practical suggestions to pass along to help them help you!

In the meantime, remember you can always ask us anything:

Ask the GIC any Digital Accessibility Question

Read more articles about: Accessibility, Announcement, CLF, Content Strategy, Design, Lighthouse, User Research.

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