Techniques for WCAG 2.

Skip to Content (Press Enter)

 Contents
 Intro
 Previous: Technique PDF20
 Next: Technique PDF22
On this page:
 Important Information about Techniques
 Applicability
 Description
 Examples
 Resources
 Related Techniques
 Tests

-
PDF21: Using List tags for lists in PDF documents

Important Information about Techniques

See Understanding Techniques for WCAG Success Criteria for important
information about the usage of these informative techniques and how
they relate to the normative WCAG 2.0 success criteria. The Applicability
section explains the scope of the technique, and the presence of
techniques for a specific technology does not imply that the technology
can be used in all situations to create content that meets WCAG 2.0.

Applicability
Tagged PDF documents with lists.

This technique relates to:

 Success Criterion 1.3.1 (Info and Relationships)

o How to Meet 1.3.1 (Info and Relationships)
o Understanding Success Criterion 1.3.1 (Info and Relationships)

User Agent and Assistive Technology Support

Notes
 See User Agent Support Notes for PDF21. Also see PDF Technology
Notes.

Description

The intent of this technique is to create lists of related items using list
elements appropriate for their purposes. PDF files containing lists are
normally created or repaired using a tool for authoring PDF.

When markup is used that visually formats items as a list but does not
indicate the list relationship, users may have difficulty navigating the
information. An example of such visual formatting is simply using line-
breaks to separate list items.

Some assistive technologies allow users to navigate from list to list or

item to item. If the lists are not correctly formatted with list tags, these
users will have difficulty understanding the list content.

The easiest way to create lists in PDF content is to format them properly
using list markup in the authoring tool, for example, Microsoft Word or
OpenOffice.org Writer. However, if you do not have access to the source
file and authoring tool, you can use Acrobat Pro's TouchUp Reading
Order tool and the Tags panel.

The PDF specification defines list structure in section 14.8.4.3.3 (List

Elements). The structure types for lists in PDF documents are:

 L - the List tag, which contains one or more LI tags.

 LI - the List Item tag. List item tags can contain Lbl and LBody tags.
 Lbl - the list item label. Contains distinguishing information such as a item
number or bullet character.
 LBody - the list item body. Contains list item content, or in the case of a
nested list, it may contain additional List tag trees.

Examples
Example 1: Adding lists to Microsoft Word 2007 documents

This example is shown with Microsoft Word. There are other software
tools that perform similar functions. See the list of other software tools
in PDF Authoring Tools that Provide Accessibility Support.

On the Home ribbon, use the lists tools to create or repair lists in Word
documents. This is the easiest way to ensure that lists are formatted
correctly when they are converted to PDF.
 In the image below, the numbered and bullet lists were created using
the list tools. The third list did not use the list tool (see the ribbon) and
the list will not be tagged as list elements when converted to PDF.

Example 2: Adding lists to OpenOffice.org Writer 2.2 documents

This example is shown with OpenOffice.org Writer. There are other

software tools that perform similar functions. See the list of other
software tools in PDF Authoring Tools that Provide Accessibility
Support.

Use the Bullets and Numbering tool to create or repair lists in

OpenOffice.org Writer documents. This is the easiest way to ensure
that lists are formatted correctly when they are converted to PDF.

In the image below, the numbered and bullet lists were created using
the list tools. The third list did not use the list tool (see the toolbar) and
the list will not be tagged as list elements when converted to PDF.
 This example is shown in operation in the working example of adding
lists to OpenOffice Writer documents.
Example 3: Ensuring that lists are correctly formatted using Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro

This example is shown with Adobe Acrobat Pro. There are other
software tools that perform similar functions. See the list of other
software tools in PDF Authoring Tools that Provide Accessibility
Support.

1. View > Navigation Panels... > Tags

2. Inspect the lists in the document to determine which, if any, are not
formatted properly.

In the following image, the third list is formatted as text. The list items
are separated only by line-breaks. Assistive technology may not be
able to render the list intelligibly for users.
To repair the list, use the Tags panel to create list tags in the content.

The following image shows the resulting first list item correctly
formatted.
 This example is shown in operation in the working example of ensuring
lists are properly formatted in Acrobat Pro.
Example 4: Marking up lists using List structure elements

The following code fragment illustrates code that is typical marking up a

list hierarchy in PDF documents. It uses the simple numbered list in the
previous examples. This is typically accomplished by an authoring tool.
4 0 obj

<</Type /Page

/Contents 5 0 R

>>

endobj

5 0 obj

<< /Length 3 0 R >>

stream

/P <</MCID 1>> BDC

BT T* (The most popular sports are:) Tj ET EMC

/Lbl <</MCID 11>> BDC

 BT T* (1. ) Tj ET EMC

/LBody <</MCID 12>> /BDC

BT (Snow-shoeing ) Tj ET EMC

/Lbl <</MCID 21>> BDC

BT T* (2. ) Tj ET EMC

/LBody <</MCID 22>> /BDC

BT (Ice-skating ) Tj ET EMC

/Lbl <</MCID 31>> BDC

BT T* (3. ) Tj ET EMC

/LBody <</MCID 32>> /BDC

BT (Skiing ) Tj ET EMC

endstream

endobj

101 0 obj % Structure element for intro paragraph to list ("The most popular sports are:")

<< /Type /StructElem

/S /P

/P 201 0 R

/Pg 4 0 R

/K 1

>>

endobj

111 0 obj % Structure element for first item, list label (Lbl): "1."

<< /Type /StructElem

/S /Lbl

/P 211 0 R

/Pg 4 0 R

/K 11

>>

endobj

112 0 obj

<< /Type /StructElem % Structure element for first item, list text (LBody): ("Snow-shoeing")

/S /LBody

/P 211 0 R

/Pg 4 0 R
 /K 12

>>

endobj

... [ objects 121-122 and 131-132, referencing MCIDs 21-22 and 31-32 are omitted in the interest of space. ]

201 0 obj

<< /Type /StructElem

/S /Caption % Intro paragraph

/P 400 0 R

/K [101 0 R]

>>

endobj

211 0 obj

<< /Type /StructElem

/S /LI % List item for "1. Snow-shoeing"

/P 400 0 R

/K [111 0 R 112 0 R]

>>

endobj

212 0 obj

<< /Type /StructElem

/S /LI % List item for "2. Ice-skating"

/P 301 0 R

/K [121 0 R 122 0 R]

>>

endobj

213 0 obj

<< /Type /StructElem

/S /LI % List item for "3. Skiing"

/P 301 0 R

/K [131 0 R 132 0 R]

>>

endobj
 400 0 obj

<< /Type /StructElem

/S /L % Top-level structure element in the list hierarchy

/K [201 0 R 211 0 R 212 0 R 213 0 R]

>>

endobj

Resources

Resources are for information purposes only, no endorsement implied.

 Section 14.8.4.3.3 (List Elements) in PDF 1.7 (ISO 32000-1)

 PDF and Accessibility

Related Techniques

 G115: Using semantic elements to mark up structure

Tests
Procedure

1. For a list in a PDF document, verify in one of the following ways:

o Read the PDF document with a screen reader, listening to hear that list is
read correctly when reading the content line-by-line.
o Use a tool that is capable of showing lists to open the PDF document and
view the list to check that it is correctly structured.
o Inspect the tag tree to verify that the list is structured according to the
PDF specification.
o Use a tool that exposes the document through the accessibility API and
verify that the list is correctly structured.
Expected Results

 #1 is true

If this is a sufficient technique for a success criterion, failing this test

procedure does not necessarily mean that the success criterion has not
been satisfied in some other way, only that this technique has not been
successfully implemented and can not be used to claim conformance.

 Top
 Contents
 Intro
 Previous: Technique PDF20
 Next: Technique PDF22
This Web page is part of Techniques and Failures for Web Content Accessibility
Guidelines 2.0 (see the latest version of this document). The entire document is
also available as a single HTML file. See the The WCAG 2.0 Documents for an
explanation of how this document fits in with other Web Content Accessibility
Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 documents. To send public comments, please follow
the Instructions for Commenting on WCAG 2.0 Documents.

Copyright © 2016 W3C (MIT, ERCIM, Keio, Beihang).

®

W3C liability, trademark and document use rules apply.