Hi, Drupalites!
While this message includes several updates, our primary focus is on encouraging immediate action to address PDF accessibility issues on your websites.
If you missed our last two messages, please note that compliance with the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) digital accessibility mandates — particularly as they relate to PDFs — is required by April 24, 2026. These requirements apply to all public-facing digital content, including faculty CVs and links to third-party websites.
We are here to help you navigate this work.
Getting Started with Accessibility Compliance
In alignment with Ը’s guidance on evaluating the necessity of PDFs, The Chronicle of Higher Education recently noted that many institutions are launching “get rid of PDFs” initiatives as they prepare for the April deadline. Common strategies include:
- Questioning whether a PDF is the most appropriate delivery method
- Converting content to accessible HTML pages when possible
We strongly encourage you to begin this work now to stay on track for compliance.
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What You Should Do First
- Request a content export
Submit a ticket at /websupport to receive a list of all PDFs on your department website.
Note: This mandate applies to faculty CVs and similar documents. - Evaluate each PDF and file
For every file, determine the appropriate next step:- Delete (preferred, when content is no longer needed)
- Convert to a web page (HTML)
- Delete after transferring to University Archives
- Convert to an archived file (instructions available on our guidelines page)
- Remediate the PDF to meet accessibility requirements
- Use our decision tree for guidance
Visit our PDF guidelines page for a decision tree and step-by-step solutions to help determine the best path forward. - For those files you absolutely must keep, leverage our newly introduced Accessibility Hub in Drupal. It will run an accessibility check and return issues that need resolved. Access information about the new hub and functionality, which launched on Jan. 22!
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PDF Accessibility Workshops Now Available
Need help evaluating PDFs, remediating files or understanding accessibility best practices? We are now offering hands-on PDF accessibility workshops to help you prepare for the April 24 compliance deadline.
- In-person and virtual options available.
- Space may be limited — early registration is encouraged.
- Please share this opportunity with colleagues or student employees who manage website content or PDFs.
- Consider this dedicated working time!
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Monitoring Broken Links During PDF Cleanup
As you delete, convert or remediate PDFs — and remove duplicate or outdated content — it is important to monitor your site for broken links.
Use your Siteimprove Quality Assurance and Accessibility reports to identify and resolve issues that may result from this work. Broken links negatively impact both user experience and search performance in Google, Bing and other search engines.
We will be restarting our monthly QA and Accessibility report emails as reminders. A login button is included below if you have time to review your site’s health this week.
In Other Business
Freshservice Update: Web Support Expanded to Service Catalog
What is changing? We have updated the Web Support intake process. The general form previously used for all requests has been modified. All Drupal and Web Services options have been removed from that form and moved to a new, expanded Service Catalog.
Note: The old form remains active only for Plesk and Flashline support requests.
The New Web Services Catalog For all website support (Drupal, content, design, etc.), you must now select the specific service that matches your request from the new catalog:
- Access & Permissions: Request or modify website access and user roles.
- Content & Page Management: General updates to webpages involving text, images, videos, files, etc.
- Departmental Directories & Profiles: Add, update or modify profile listings and directories.
- New Website Development & Major Changes: New sites, site restructures, major updates or name changes.
- Request a Drupal Site Export: Get a complete report of your website's pages, files and other content
- Siteimprove & Analytics: UTMs, analytics reports, Siteimprove, SEO, and content quality.
- Technical Issues: Report site errors, outages, or broken functionality.
- Training & Guidance: Training for content editing, design and web tools.
- Visual Design & Layout Assistance: Page layout, design, and styling improvements.
- Other Web Services: Catch-all for requests that do not fit into the categories above.
Why the change? Moving these specific requests to a dedicated service catalog allows for immediate sorting and better triage. This helps us identify the nature of the work faster and enables future automated prioritization.
Action Required: Please update your bookmarks for Web Support. If you used the previous form for Drupal/Web support, you must now use the new Service Catalog links located on the Web Support site.
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Footer Mailing Address Update
On Jan. 22 the campus-wide site footer mailing address was updated to reflect the university’s official mailing address, P.O. Box 5190, Kent, OH 44242-0001. This update was applied globally and no action is required from site owners, any pages using the standard footer will be updated automatically.
If you have questions about file management or need assistance with the triage process, please submit a ticket at www.kent.edu/websupport.
Happy editing!
Web Team
Jared Boehm, Senior Manager, Digital Enterprise Solutions
Lin Danes, Executive Director of Digital Communications (Web Services)
Laura Duarte Schneider, Student Web Support Specialist
Olivia Moye-Isaly, Student Web Support Specialist
Eddie Lampert, Web Designer
Paul McKinney, Web Designer
James Parsons, Web Content Coordinator
Tim Priester, Web Designer & Services Lead
Todd Randolph, Senior Applications Developer