WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: PDF column tag

for

From: Duff Johnson
Date: Jul 25, 2022 7:06AM

HI Sean,

> When a document is using newspaper column style or has content in two columns. Does PDF have a column tag? If not, how do you fix the reading order for columns so the screen reader reads column 1, then column 2, etc. If someone can provide an example of the tagging.

There is no “column” tag; in PDF, text displayed in columns is tagged normally with heading, paragraph, etc. tags. The tags follow the flow of the text through the columns, but need not represent the columns themselves.

PDF does include “Column attributes” for grouping elements (see 14.8.5.4.7 in ISO 32000-2), however the PDF community has never actually determined that this attribute has an accessibility relevance. If someone can identify such a relevance I'd be delighted to take it back to the committees working on PDF/UA-2.

> Currently it is being done in a Table.

This is incorrect for text laid out in columns, as such content does not have table relationships.

Duff.