Table of contents (TOC) and accessibility

[jean-mariel50339827]

Hi,

I would like to know if tables of contents are recommended (in addition to bookmarks) especially for large documents. What are the best practices in this area in terms of accessibility? Are there any reference documents that define these good practices?

Thanks for your help.

Jean Marie

[Chad Chelius]

Tables of Contents are not required in an accessible PDF file however bookmarks are. That being said, many documents designed for print that are being published electronically and will often contain a table of contents in which case that table of contents needs to be tagged correctly. Each table of contents entry should be tagged as a <TOCI> and all off those elements need to be children of a <TOC> tag. The PDF Techniques for WCAG 2.0 discusses this and you'll get the best results using the Table of Contents feature in the source application such as MS Word or Adobe InDesign.

[jean-mariel50339827]

Thanks a lot. My question was about a particular type of document: PhD. Only the electronic form is kept and distributed. All thesis contain a table of contents but doctoral students use their word processing badly (especially those who write with Word, even if it can happen with LaTeX). In general, we (librarian) add bookmarks (if they do not exist) but I wondered about the necessity and interest of tagging the table of contents of this type of document in terms of accessibility.

Jean-Marie

[Chad Chelius · Accepted solution]

Well, if the TOC exists in the document, then it must be tagged. The entries are tagged as <TOCI> objects, and then all of those entries need to exist in a <TOC> tag. In theory, you could also artifact the entire TOC as long as you're providing bookmarks but I wouldn't recommend it. The TOC is helpful and if it's created using the TOC feature in Word or InDesign, then it will automatically be tagged correctly for the most part.

[visioned]

Hi Chad,

I read that you said "Tables of Contents are not required in an accessible PDF file however bookmarks are".

That's not true. It's a PDF-UA requirement. When you add a TOC in Word Adobe Acrobat Pro exports it with the <Reference tag> in stead of a <Link> tag. Or do you have another solution for that.