WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Lists without labels in PDFs

for

From: chagnon
Date: Sep 13, 2018 1:53PM

IIRC from memory, PDF/UA-1 does not require the LBL tag on list items. Only
the LBody tag.

PDF/UA-1 and WCAG 2.0 are the current federal requirements under Sec. 508.
Any newer standards are not yet "the law."

But agencies like HHS can always require documents to exceed the law.
Whether that's the right action for them to take is debatable, especially
since we have neither a standard that requires it nor the software tools to
build it.

At this time, we recommend for HHS documents that have a
non-bulleted/non-numbered list, tag them with just <P> tags and an
appropriate heading tag before each section, if you think that will aid in
comprehension.

Other agencies, who haven't put the cart before the horse like HHS has, are
compliant using the standard list tag structure without an LBL subtag.

The best solution needs to be:

-- That the ISO PDF/UA committee address non-bulleted and non-numbered lists
in a forthcoming standard. Not all lists have bullets or numbers!

-- That software authoring tools such as MS Word and Adobe InDesign allow
authors to style lists as lists but without numbers or bullets or LBL tags.

-- And, of course, that assistive technologies correctly interpret this new
tagged format.

Let's just say that all of that is "in development."

--Bevi Chagnon
- - -
Bevi Chagnon, founder/CEO | <EMAIL REMOVED>
- - -
PubCom: Technologists for Accessible Design + Publishing
consulting . training . development . design . sec. 508 services
Upcoming classes at www.PubCom.com/classes
- - -
Latest blog-newsletter - Accessibility Tips at www.PubCom.com/blog