“Just upload the PDF”

For many conferences and research meetings, the default solution for sharing posters and presentations online has been simple: “Just upload the PDF.”

It’s understandable. PDFs are familiar, easy to generate, and work well for printing. But they were not designed for how scientists and students at research events explore content today: on all sorts and sizes of internet connected devices – in crowded poster halls and in short bursts of attention between sessions, in hotel rooms and on planes and trains, at home, in the classroom and at the office. 

If the goal is to maximize the visibility, accessibility, and impact of scientific work, then format is not a cosmetic detail – a simple choice between two interchangeable formats. It is part of the global scientific communication infrastructure, directly shaping whether the research is discovered, understood, and remembered.

iPosters are built specifically for this job. Here’s why that matters.

From information overload to structured exploration

PDF posters typically present everything at once: dense text, multiple figures, tables, and references laid out on a single, fixed page. Whether you are standing in a crowded poster hall or sitting at a desk with time and focus, you face the same challenge: a static surface where everything competes for attention at the same time.

iPosters approach the presentation challenge differently. An iPoster is not a single, static page but a dynamic presentation environment. There are no practical limits to the amount of content or context an author can include – text, high-resolution figures, image galleries, video and audio clips, data visualizations, and external links to datasets, code, or full papers. But what matters is not only how much content can be included, but also how well it is structured.

iPosters provide clearly defined expandable and scrollable multimedia content boxes that allow visitors to navigate the content logically: start with a concise overview, then drill down into the details of methods, results, discussions, references, etc. The format supports both quick orientation and deep exploration, without overwhelming the viewer. Instead of confronting visitors with a wall of information, it enables structured exploration.

This structured, dynamic approach also benefits authors as they create their iPosters in a cloud-based authoring tool with a choice of templates and built-in layouts, content blocks, and media handling. They spend less time wrestling with slide dimensions, text boxes, and image placement, and more time focusing on how to communicate their research clearly.  According to feedback, many authors find building an iPoster easier and more intuitive than assembling a large poster in PowerPoint or similar software and exporting it as a PDF.(https://ipostersessions.com/testimonials/)

Designed for real-world devices, not just printers

PDFs were originally created to ensure that documents looked the same on screen as they did on paper. That is ideal when the primary goal is to print. It is not ideal when the primary goal is to be able to explore research on a variety of screens and devices in a variety of settings and situations, onsite and online.

Conference attendees want to be able to review content in transit, between sessions, and during short breaks. A PDF that was designed for a large printed poster quickly becomes a usability problem on smaller screens. Text shrinks to an unreadable size, figures compress into tiny thumbnails, and the viewer is forced into constant zooming and panning just to follow a single sentence or axis label.

Interactive iPosters are designed with this reality in mind. Whether they are on a 6” cellphone on the way to the airport, a 13” laptop in a café, a 27” desktop at home, or a 55” touch screen in the poster hall, layouts are responsive: text and images reflow and resize, remaining legible and usable across different devices. Navigation elements stay accessible, allowing viewers to move between sections without losing their place. Instead of fighting the format, readers can focus on the research itself. The format adapts to the user, rather than forcing the user to adapt to the format.

Enabling deeper engagement through multimedia

Scientific work is increasingly complex, multimodal, and data-rich. Many projects involve intricate experimental setups, dynamic simulations, live high-dimensional datasets, and longitudinal observations that cannot be fully captured in a static figure and a few paragraphs of text. A PDF, particularly when constrained by a poster layout, forces authors to compress this richness into a small number of flat images.

iPosters have no constraints. They allow authors to supplement core visuals and text with additional layers of explanation and evidence. A figure can be replaced by a GIF and accompanied by a narration, guiding the viewer through the logic of the analysis. A methods section can include short videos of an experimental setup or a screen capture of a model in action. A 3D graphic of a disease vector can be embedded, allowing a viewer to manipulate it to investigate its structure.  Links can point readers to live datasets, code repositories, or associated preprints and publications.

Using iPosters, authors can choose the most appropriate medium for different parts of their story, and to provide depth where it matters most. Viewers, in turn, can decide how far they want to go: a quick scan of the key findings, or a deeper dive into how those findings were produced.

By making this richer engagement possible, iPosters support more serious, substantive conversations around the work. They shift poster sessions from quick glimpses into the research to genuine opportunities for understanding and collaboration, both onsite and online, with built-in communication and networking tools.

Seeing what actually resonates

In a PDF-based world, the primary measure of engagement is often a simple download count, if that metric is available at all. A file might be downloaded hundreds of times and barely read, or it might be opened by a small number of highly engaged readers. The format offers very little insight into what actually happens after the click.

iPoster analytics make it possible to understand engagement in a more granular and meaningful way. Because the content is structured and presented within an online environment, organizers can observe how visitors interact with it; they can see not only which posters attract the most visits, but, significantly, also which elements hold attention, and how interest varies across topics, tracks, or time periods. 

These insights are not about turning science into a popularity contest. They are about understanding how people navigate the content, where they find value, and where there may be opportunities to improve communication. For conference organizers, such data can inform program design for future events. For sponsors and stakeholders, it provides a clearer picture of the real impact of the poster program, beyond anecdotal impressions and head counts.

Accessibility as a core requirement, not an afterthought

Another key difference between PDFs and iPosters is in their accessibility.

Traditional poster halls present obvious challenges for many participants with disabilities: narrow aisles, crowded spaces, poor acoustics, glare from lighting, small fonts, and visuals that are difficult to view up close—especially from a wheelchair or for someone with low vision. When posters are simply converted into PDFs and posted online, many of the same issues persist and new ones appear: text is often too small, color contrast is inconsistent, images and graphics may be indecipherable, and the underlying document structure is often missing—making it difficult or impossible for screen readers to interpret the content correctly. The result is that an entire segment of the audience is effectively excluded from meaningful engagement with the research.

With iPosters, the viewing environment is built from the ground up to support WCAG 2.1 AA–aligned accessibility and to align with EN 301 549 expectations commonly used in European ICT procurement. For US customers, the same WCAG-based approach supports accessibility expectations under the ADA. Keyboard navigation is supported throughout the interface. Text size and line spacing are resizable, contrast and color are controllable, and images can be accompanied by alternative text. Text can be paired with narration, and audio and video content can be paired with transcripts and captions where provided.

By embedding accessibility in the format itself, rather than leaving it entirely to individual authors to solve, organizers can take a significant step toward making their events genuinely accessible. This is not only an ethical imperative; in many jurisdictions it is a legal and regulatory requirement. Either way, accessibility is central to the quality and reach of scientific communication, not an optional enhancement.

Format as part of the scientific infrastructure

Viewed in isolation, the choice between “PDF” and “interactive poster” might appear purely technical. It is easy to treat it as a matter of convenience or aesthetics. But at scale, across entire communities and over many years, format decisions become part of the scientific infrastructure.

If research is locked into static files that are hard to discover, difficult to navigate, and inaccessible to many, then the practical reach of that research is limited, no matter how strong the underlying science may be. When research is presented in a dynamic, structured, and accessible format, it is easier for people to find, understand, reuse, and build upon it.

Moving beyond PDFs to interactive, accessible formats is about aligning the way we present research with the way we work, collaborate, and learn. It is about giving authors better tools to tell their stories, giving attendees better tools to explore them, and giving organizations better tools to steward and showcase the knowledge they are responsible for.

iPosterSessions make that alignment practical. The underlying question for conferences and research organizations is straightforward: if accessibility, engagement and knowledge transfer are the goals, can we afford to let our format hold us back?