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Re: TOCI tag issue in PDF solved - sort of

for

From: Philip Kiff
Date: Feb 9, 2022 7:02AM

Thanks for tracking down this strange PDF tagging issue, Karen. I
wouldn't have suspected an innocent looking <Span> to be the culprit!
Especially because - as you noted - one of the examples of TOC's shown
in the 2019 "Tagged PDF Best Practices Guide: Syntax" reference document
uses that exact structure. But I'll be sure to watch out for stray
<Span> tags within <TOCI> constructs when I run into table issues with
screen readers in the future.

There's so much that occurs within PDF software that is like a black
box. You can sometimes only figure out solutions through trial and error
- observing the output to a screenreader in different cases until you
pin down the problem. And between each test, you have to generate an
entirely new PDF. It would be nice one day to have something like the
dynamic, readable accessibility tree that can be observed directly in an
HTML DOM while changes are being made. Our current tools for creating
and remediating PDFs are still rudimentary in many ways, despite how
much better they are now than even just 5 years ago.

Phil.

On 2022-02-08 13:58, Karen McCall wrote:
> Everyone:
>
> I've been trying to figure out why my screen reader, starting in 2019 divides the TOCI items into:
>
> Introduction as a link
> The dot leaders as a link.
> The page number as a third link in the TOCI.
>
> This was not happening before October 2018.
>
> I didn't think that a <Span> tag would cause such an accessibility barrier. I also haven't had time, until now to track this down.
>
> The culprit is the <Span> tag in the TOCI tag.
>
> Problem semantic:
> <TOCI>
> <Reverence>
> <Link>
> Link-OBJR
> <Span>
> Introduction
> <Span>
> Dot Leaders
> <Link>
> Dot Leaders and page number
> <Span>
> The space after the period.
>
> I remediated the TOCI by moving the second <Link> item under the first <Link> item and deleting the empty <Link> tag. That didn't work.
>
> It wasn't until I removed all the <Span> tags under the <Reference> tag that I was able to get a coherent TOCI item read by the screen readers.
>
> So the syntax best practices guide creates an inaccessible TOCI. I looked at their example and it was set up like the problematic one at the start of this post.
>
> The fix - remove the <Span> tags completely:
> <TOCI>
> <Reference>
> <Link>
> <Link-OBJR
> Introduction
> Dot Leaders
> Page number
>
> Ya gotta love clean tags!
>
> ...and it's NOT the fault of my screen reader! It is the tag implementation!
>
> BTW, do not put Alt text on the <Link> tags in a TOCI...It breaks the TOCI. It is read as it should be without the Alt Text.
>
> Cheers, Karen
>
>
>
> > > List archives athttp://webaim.org/discussion/archives
>