RE: Creating an accessible Table of Contents

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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