Tagging a List spanning multiple pages

[NicklN]

Does anyone have recommendations/insight for how to tag a list spanning multiple pages with Accessibility (WCAG 2.0 AA) in mind? 

I have a court case document that is essentially formatted as a long list spanning 30+ pages with 170 items. 

In between list items are headings that I've tagged from H4 to H6. An example would be:

44. <paragraph of text>

45. <paragraph of text>

      <H4>

46. <paragraph of text>

47. <paragraph of text

      <H5>

48. <paragraph of text>

Initially I threw everything into one big list, but quite a few of these pages have footnotes as well as the headers in between list items...The example above was considered "A list with 7 items:" to a screen reader.

What is the best practice for tagging a list spanning multiple pages like this? Keeping in mind there are footnotes at the bottom of certain pages and headings in between list items.

Any help/information is greatly appreciated. 

Thanks!

[Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com · Accepted solution]

Assuming you're making a PDF of the document, look at the PDF/UA-1 standards for guidance, which was developed for accessible PDFs. WCAG is geared to websites and HTML-based content. PDF/UA was designed to harmonize and complement WCAG. https://www.pdfa.org/resource/pdfua-in-a-nutshell/ 

Per PDF/UA-1, all lists must be encased in an <L> tag, and each individual list item must be in an <LI> tag. When a list breaks across columns or pages, it still must be one list (one <L> tag).

But given that you have subheadings within the list, it would be appropriate to start a new list after each heading. Example, based on yours above, the tag tree in Acrobat would look like this:

<L>

     <LI>

         <Lbl>44.

         <LBody>Text Content

     <LI>

         <Lbl>45.

         <LBody>Text Content

<H4>Heading Content

<L>

     <LI>

         <Lbl>46.

         <LBody>Text Content

     <LI>

         <Lbl>47.

         <LBody>Text Content

<H4>Heading Content

<L>

     <LI>

         <Lbl>48.

         <LBody>Text Content

     <LI>

         <Lbl>49.

         <LBody>Text Content

[NicklN]

Bevi- 

First and foremost - thank you! I created an account and posted this with the hopes that you might be able to provide an answer and I really appreciate what you do for this community. 

I brought up WCAG because we're treating this particular PDF as if it would be posted to our public website. I will definitely need to read up and understand PDF/UA better as it has come up quite a bit in my work. 

Your example is how I've restructured my tags, so I'm glad to hear that is the appropriate way to have this tagged. My question is resolved, thanks again!

[Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com]

Great! Glad to help.

A good reference is the PDF Association's Syntax Guide for PDF/UA-1. Although it's written for software developers who create software to generate PDFs, there are nuggets of info for advanced content creators/remediators like yourself. Read between the lines of code and you'll find the tag structure we're dealing with.

Free download at https://www.pdfa.org/resource/tagged-pdf-best-practice-guide-syntax/

[NicklN]

This looks excellent, thanks so much!

[ada_questions]

I have a very similar problem. What's different in my case is that one of the list items splits across two pages. In the example you provided, it seems each list items is on one page. 

Mine looks like this:

Page 1: 

 <List item 1>

 <footer>

Page 2:

 <header>

 <List Item 1 - continued> 

 <List Item 2>

Would you create a new list with new list item on the second page? 

[Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com]

Quote: << Would you create a new list with new list item on the second page? >>

Absolutely not!

That would definitely violate PDF/UA-1 accessibility standard. Check the Syntax Guide referenced earlier in this thread.

The entire list, regardless of how many columns or pages it spans, must be contained in one <L> tag.

Think it through: it's one list, therefore it gets one <L>.

And FYI, headers, footers, and pagination must be artifacted and kept out of the live content. That's required by PDF/UA-1, also.

[a_C_student]

Without seeing the document I can't be sure, but those look like enumerated paragraphs, not list items. I would tag the paragraphs with <P>. Tagging enumerated paragraphs as a list will make the document more difficult for an AT user to navigate. Simple heading and paragraph tags are easier to navigate.