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Re: A case for artifacting bullets in unordered lists in PDFs

for

From: Ryan E. Benson
Date: Jul 23, 2013 9:09PM

Andrew (and Olaf),

[AWK]: Most AT recognize the bullet character and announce "bullet" so you
don't need to use ActualText unless you are using a non-standard bullet
(e.g. using a star for the bullet).
[REB]: What should be placed as the value of the actualText if a
non-standard bullet (such as U+25B6 (right facing triangle))? Just bullet?

--
Ryan E. Benson


On Tue, Jul 23, 2013 at 4:21 PM, Andrew Kirkpatrick < <EMAIL REMOVED> >wrote:

> Some comments inline:
>
> 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.
>
> [AWK] Lbl is optional, per the ISO 32000 and ISO 14289 specs. Not a bad
> idea, but optional. I would disagree that artifacting the bullet character
> is helpful. Most AT recognize the bullet character and announce "bullet"
> so you don't need to use ActualText unless you are using a non-standard
> bullet (e.g. using a star for the bullet). As far as how the information
> is conveyed to AT if you use Lbl and Lbody, just Lbody, or even just put
> the text inside the LI directly - it is the same. The only difference with
> JAWS is that when you use Lbl the bullet is being read as if it is on its
> own line, which in my mind isn't a great way of announcing the bullet item.
>
> 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.
>
> [AWK] screen readers are provided with information that a list is present,
> how many list items there are, and what list nesting level the list is at.
> JAWS allows users to jump from list to list and from list item to item
> with quickkeys, although some users will read the list with the arrow keys.
> There is no doubt that the bullet or the number helps differentiate for the
> user when they are on a new bullet in this case, but the AT does provide
> additional tools.
>
> 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.
>
> [AWK] The context of the paragraph is making a list in Word and converting
> it to PDF. Can you advise on a better or easier way to accomplish this
> within Word? The lists are correctly formatted when created from Word in
> this way, although it is not the only way for a list to be correctly
> formatted. There is no need to change these lists in Acrobat later to add
> the Lbl tag, unless it just makes you happy to see the full form of the
> allowable list structure in the tags.
>
> > > >