Tagging Lists and Table of Contents
- Daniel LaGrow
Instructions
Section 5.21: Lists
Lists are comprised of three or sometimes four tag types:
List: <L>
List Item: <LI>
List Body: <Lbody>
Label: <Lbl>
Each item in a list is enclosed within a List Body tag, which is nested inside a List Item tag. All List Item tags are contained within a List parent tag. Label tags, which hold the bullet or number, are placed inside List Item tags. While Label tags are optional, the other three tags (List, List Item, and List Body) are required. If Label tags are not used, the bullet or number must be included within the List Body tag.
Acrobat does not differentiate between ordered and unordered lists, even if the original authoring software does. In Acrobat, both types are assigned the same tags.
Click the Selection Tool and highlight your bullet point or number point.
Go to the Options Menu and select Create Tag from Selection.
The New Tag box will appear. Go to the Type dropdown menu and choose Label.
Now, select the contents of the first list item (in this case, it's the words “Offensive jokes or comments.”
Repeat the process from before to create a new tag. This time, create a List Item Body tag and apply the text to the new tag.
Now the Label tag and the List Item Body tag have been created with their content applied.
Next, we need to create a List Item tag. Repeat the process we did before, and change the type of tag to List Item.
An empty List Item tag will appear in the Accessibility Tags pane. Drag and drop the Label tag and the List body tag as children of the List Item tag.
Once all of your list items and bullet points are tagged, create a List Tag and move all of the List Item tags inside of the List tag. Make sure they are in order.
Section 5.22: Table of Contents
Your table of contents will act as a link to the headings in the rest of the document. This is so we have shortcuts to all of the content in our document. To tag a table of contents, we will need to use the following tags
Table of Contents - <TOC>
Table of Contents Item - <TOCI>
Link and Link - OBJR - To create links in the Table of Contents that can be read by screen readers
Paragraph - <P> to be the parent of the Link tags
Heading 1-6 Style - for the text Table of Contents depending on where your table of contents is in your PDF.
The process of tagging a table of contents is similar to tagging a table. We start on the inside and work our way out.
First, create the link and paragraph tags for each item.
Next, create Table of Content Item tags and place the paragraph tags and link tags inside them.
Third, create the Table of Contents tag and place the Table of Content Item tags inside it.
Then use the Alt Text field in the Link tags to determine what the screen reader will read for each item.
Finally, tag the words “Table of Contents” as a Heading, like Heading Level 2.
The full process for tagging a Table of Contents is as follows:
Go to the Options Menu and click Find.
The Find Element Dialog box will open. Change the Find dropdown menu to “Unmarked Links.” Then click Find. Your content will be highlighted in Pink Borders. Click Tag Element. If you have alerts from Acrobat saying that the search is complete but nothing has been tagged, delete your file and save your Word file as a PDF. This time, uncheck the Enable Accessibility and Reflow with Tagged Adobe PDF. This will leave your document untagged.
Then keep clicking Tag Element until all of the Links are tagged. In your hierarchy, you will see Link - OBJR tags.
Now go back to the Options Menu and create a Link Tag. Place each Link OBJR tag into their own Link Tag.
Right click on each Link tag and select Properties.
In the Object Properties box, go to the Tag tab. In the Alternate Text box, type what you want a screen reader to read for that Table of Content Item. For our example, we will type in “Part 1: Introduction, Page 2.” Then close the Object Properties box. Repeat this process for the other Link tags.
Create several Paragraph tags and place each of your link tags inside them.
Create several Table of Contents Item tag or <TOCI>. Then place each of your Paragraph tags inside the <TOCI> tags.
Go to the Options Menu to create a Table of Contents Tag or TOC. Place it at the top of your hierarchy and place your Table of Contents Items Tags inside it. Repeat this process for the rest of the links.
Create a Table of Contents (TOC) tag and place all of the Table of Contents (TOCI) tags inside it.
Finally, create a Heading 2 tag and place it at the top of your hierarchy and place your TOC tag below it. Highlight your Table of Contents Title and place it inside the H2 tag. Your final hierarchy has been established.
