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Re: Lists without bullet or number characters

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From: Duff Johnson
Date: Aug 19, 2016 8:19PM

Hi Bevi,

Certainly, PDF/UA does not require that list items have labels. That would be a content requirement rather than a structural / syntactical requirement, and PDF/UA focusses on "getting the PDF aspect of things right". It's not a best-practice guide for authoring, merely a bunch of rules for software developers.

The short version: PDF 1.7 and PDF/UA-1 do not explicitly prohibit content as a direct child of <LI> structure elements.

In practice, AT (that I'm aware of) that uses tagged PDF "understands" this situation by simply reading the label (if any) and body together (which is far from ideal, see below).

FWIW, the current draft of the PDF Association's Tagged PDF Best Practice Guide prohibits this practice.

In general, PDF/UA always requires the most semantically appropriate tag. For list items, there's always a "body" and usually, there's label content too. Since PDF/UA requires "semantically appropriate" structure elements, a strict reading implies that the content of a list item must *always* include structure elements necessary to disambiguating labels from list-bodies in all cases.

Imagine this case:

<P>
My list of things to buy.
<LI>
4 wheels.

Who knows if this means item # 4 or "4 wheels"? But...

<P>
My list of things to buy.
<LI>
<Lbl>
4
<LBody>
wheels.

and

<P>
My list of things to buy.
<LI>
<LBody>
4 wheels.

are completely clear.

In reviewing the current drafts of PDF 2.0 and PDF/UA-2, I agree with the current draft of the Best Practice Guide, and think the screws need to be tightened on this one. IE, that LBody would be mandated (and Lbl remain optional) for list item content.

HTH!

Duff.



> On Aug 19, 2016, at 18:46, Chagnon | PubCom < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>
> Patrick L wrote: < Why wouldn't it? What SC do you think this would violate? >
>
> Neither WCAG or PDF/UA mention this situation one way or the other. They reference only normal bulleted and numbered lists.
>
> Since HTML coding doesn't specifically tag the actual bullet or number character, it's probably OK to not have a bullet or number character itself. The content will be understandable without them. Example:
>
> In HTML
> <UL>
> <LI>
> <LI>
> </UL>
>
> But with PDFs, there's only one <L> tag to apply to both ordered (numbered) or unordered (bulleted) lists. And PDF/UA standards (7.6) suggest subtags on the individual <LI> list items. Example:
>
> <L>
> <LI>
> <Lbl> bullet or number character
> <Lbody> item text
> <LI> etc.
>
> The <Lbl> tag surrounds the bullet or number character and annouces to the user the actual bullet or number.
>
> So my original question, revised for clarify, is:
> Is it compliant with WCAG and PDF/UA to not have visual (or announced) bullet or number characters in a list?
>
> --Bevi Chagnon
>
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