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A case for artifacting bullets in unordered lists in PDFs

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From: Jonathan Metz
Date: Jul 23, 2013 8:21AM

Hi,

Currently I¹m working with someone who insists that unordered lists should
have a <Lbl> in the tag tree if there is a graphic or glyph representing
the Œbullet¹ character. My approach to unordered lists in PDFs is to
artifact the bullet character. The only places I can back up this idea is
from brief mention from CommonLook
(http://www.commonlook.com/docs-commonlook-pdf-lists#lbl) that directs "If
the bullet character itself provides no additional meaning, bullets in
unordered lists should be marked as artifacts,² and the PDF/UA Technical
Implementation Guide
(http://www.aiim.org/Research-and-Publications/standards/committees/PDFUA/T
echnical-Implementation-Guide) under 7.6 Lists, ³In such cases the
graphics objects representing the list's labels should not be contained in
the logical structure and should be marked as Artifacts.²

This is all well and good, but it doesn¹t answer my client¹s complaint
that if JAWS comes across a bulleted list, it¹s difficult to differentiate
the different List Item elements on the page. Is there a way that AT is
'supposed' to interpret unordered lists? If we go with my preference, how
does the average AT user typically acknowledge separate list item elements
on a page? The problem is, while it would be great to have every PDF we
make conform to ISO 14289; technically they only need to conform to
Section 508. Worse, the only reference to handling lists from WCAG (which
Section 508 Refresh is essentially going to mirror) can be found at
http://www.w3.org/TR/2012/NOTE-WCAG20-TECHS-20120103/PDF21.

This page has the worst recommendation for creating lists. First it
suggests that using the list button on the ribbon as the "easiest way to
ensure that lists are formatted correctly when they are converted to PDF².
It doesn¹t actually, since it throws the label element in with the <Lbody>
whenever one exports a list from Word. The user always has to edit those
elements in the tag tree later. It even goes so far as to show screenshots
of what happens when you do that. The worst part of this Œtechnique¹ is
that it mentions the List Elements, but completely fails to explain what
to do with any of them.

Any way, any help would be greatly appreciated.

Jonathan