Adobe Acrobat Reader Accessibility: Creating Lists

Overview

Lists help provide a simple way to group related items in an easy-to-read format. Lists must be properly tagged for assistive technology to read them correctly. Acrobat has list tags as well as tags for items found within the list.

Considerations

• Although Adobe will read dashes ( - ) as a bullet point, they do not automatically format as a list. Therefore, they lack the accessibility of the pre-formatted bullet points Adobe offers. To create accessible lists, you must use the pre-formatted list options

Accessible Lists Video Demonstration

How to Create a List

1. Select the Edit tab
2. Select Text
   
   
3. Click and drag to highlight the text you'd like to make a list.
   1. If you have ( - ) or other symbols to signify list items, you must remove those first
   2. While the text is highlighted, select the Bullet List option. This may be grayed out.
   3. Select the first option (--) to remove the dashes. 
      
4. To add bullet points or a numbered list, select any option from the list option in the editing pane
   1. Any of these preformatted options will be accessible.
      

List Tagging Structure

If using a preformatted list option from Adobe (or if a document is exported, the preformatted options from its native software), the lists should tag automatically. If your list does not follow the structure above, change your tags so they correspond correctly. 

Steps

1. <L> List covers all bullet points and text
2. <LI> List item, this includes both the bullet and text associated
3. <LbI> List Body Item holds just the bullet point - will be nested with <ExtraCharSpan> and Box if the bullet point is considered a "special character."
4. <LBody> List Body includes only the text associated with each bullet point.