Most of the content on this intranet is made up of ex county council information due to the county intranet being turned off. Please read the blog to find out more about how we have developed this new intranet and where you can go to find information that relates to you.
The appropriate use of documents online
Typically, online content should be provided in a web page rather than a document - however, we understand there are circumstances when a document is needed.
Why we discourage the use of documents
Having content as a web page rather than a document means that the content is responsive, user-friendly, and accessible on any device.
When content is in a document, such as a PDF, rather than automatically conforming to a customer's device (desktop computer, tablet, mobile phone), a document will only appear in a format designed for A4. Since it's not optimised for mobile, the customer will need to pinch and zoom to read the content. When content is added to the website, it is automatically optimised and re-sized for the customer's device.
Other issues with documents include:
- treated differently by browsers, apps and devices
- viewing is in isolation from the navigation of their hosting website
- not as easy to update and might have been created by an agency
- harder for search engines to crawl and index
- difficult to measure and analyse in terms of usage
- interruption of the natural reading flow as you wait for the reader to load
There are still a number of circumstances when a document file is needed. In these cases, we must take the time to properly create and tag the file so it meets accessibility requirements.
What you can do
You should get in touch with the Digital Team as early as possible when you are creating content for our websites. They will be able to provide advice on what is the best format for your content. To get in touch, fill in a request form.
You can also do an accessibility check on your content yourself, using tools such as Acrobat Pro.