Re: Creating an accessible Table of Contents

If a document happens to contain a visible Table of Contents (TOC) as part of its pages' contents, it should be included in the tagging structure of the exported PDF.

If the visible content creates issues, such issues need to be fixed. In this case, leaders either have to be marked as artifacts (which seemingly Word doesn't get right, so one would have to do it after export in Acrobat or some other tool) or have to be avoided to begin with (as recommended by Judy)

I do not consider it to be a valid recommendation to avoid the visible TOC in the document altogether. It makes the document more accessible for some uses (e.g. sighted users).

Bookmarks are yet another method for accessing the document on a structural / navigational method - and more options are usually a good thing. It is important to create bookmarks that are consistent with other structural / navigational aspects, like TOC, but also with the heading structure as such.


Olaf



Am 25 Feb 2013 um 14:48 schrieb Judy Gregg:

> Hi Vivienne,
>  
> One of the things the we found worked well is that in a Word document a TOC is very useful as it provides a form of navigation.  However, in converting it to a PDF document the TOC becomes redundant as bookmarks are already automatically created when using heading styles within Word. If the TOC is left in the Word document when converting to PDF it becomes confusing to many users as the TOC titles will be repeated in another bookmark, as well as, having an extremely long set of bookmarks; making the document more confusing for many users.
>  
> If you still absolutely have to use the TOC in the PDF eliminating the leaders is best.  Create one tab to align your page numbers rather than a leader.  That way if a person using a screen reader goes through the TOC they will still hear that there is a tab, but at least it is only one rather than several “dots”, “underscore” or “hyphen”.
>  
> Judy Gregg
> From: Vivienne CONWAY [mailto:v.conway@ecu.edu.au] 
> Sent: February-22-13 9:39 PM
> To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org list
> Subject: Creating an accessible Table of Contents
>  
> Hi all
>  
> I'm wondering if anyone has discovered how to create a Table of Contents in Word that reads properly with a screen reader when the document is put into PDF..  Using the automatic TOC function you get a disaster for reading - some styles read all the dots in the dot leader, others read something like 89 dot and then the page number.  At best if you choose the option for the solid line which is recommended you get "Chapter one one (page number)" with no pause - and that's only if you have the punctuation reading turned right down to minimal setting. As soon as you set the screen reader to read 'most' punctuation it reads either the dots or the number of dots etc.
>  
> I'm working with a local government who create a lot of large documents such as council meetings which are put into PDF that they need to make accessible and are accessed throuigh their website.  At present the TOC function is causing real headaches.  We've tried all kinds of options in Word they none of them read nicely from the PDF document that is created after tagging the Word document properly.
>  
> Any ideas?
>  
>  
> Regards
>  
> Vivienne L. Conway, B.IT(Hons), MACS CT, AALIA(cs)
> PhD Candidate & Sessional Lecturer, Edith Cowan University, Perth, W.A.
> Director, Web Key IT Pty Ltd.
> v.conway@ecu.edu.au
> v.conway@webkeyit.com
> Mob: 0415 383 673
>  
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