[Athen] How do WCAG & PDF/UA authorize removing running headers and footers from PDFs?

[Karen McCall]

Page headers and footers are considered “non-printing elements” in PDFs. They are not tagged by default.

If you want to add “page numbers” use the Page Labels technique as per ISO 14289 or PDF/UA.

You don’t tag page numbers in PDFs or add tags for page headers or footers.

Consider the accessibility barriers of:


  1.  Where do you add the page header or footer tags when a paragraph, list, or table spans multiple pages? Do you interrupt the content to add/force people with disabilities to read information that people reading the content visually skip over?
  2.  Do you put the page header and footer information together in a clump before a multi-page list, table or paragraph or after it? Would it make sense to hear repeated information that appears on every page?

We’ve never tagged page header and footer information as part of making PDFs accessible. I know some people have tagged page numbers but you end up with the dilemma I outlined above.

Page Labels do give you the opportunity to have preface pages like i, ii, iii and so forth identified for everyone. Using Page Labels, someone using a screen reader can quickly go to a specific page but someone not using a screen reader can use the same keyboard commands/tool to go to page and land on the right page. If the page numbers are in the tags tree, they don’t always line up with the physical page and the page referenced when you try to go to a specific page.

If a logo or organizational name is in a page header or footer, it also needs to be on the cover page of the document somewhere as text to acknowledge that this is an official document by that organization. And you never only put the title of the document in a page header or footer.

If you have any other questions, please feel free to contact me!

Cheers, Karen,
From: athen-list <athen-list-bounces at mailman12.u.washington.edu> On Behalf Of Adina Mulliken
Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2023 2:23 PM
To: athen-list at u.washington.edu; EDUCAUSE-ITACCESS at ConnectedCommunity.org
Subject: [Athen] How do WCAG & PDF/UA authorize removing running headers and footers from PDFs?

Hi all,
Apologies for the cross posting.

I’m wondering if anyone could advise me what success criteria or techniques within WCAG you think could most clearly be interpreted to authorize “removing” repetitive headers and footers from PDFs?  I’m aiming to find the most specific criterion or “technique” or “failure” that I can.   Maybe 2.4.1 Bypass blocks?  Or Info and Relationships?  If nothing else, I suppose this could fall under POUR principles.  Or anything within PDF/UA or any other standards you know of?  Maybe this sentence that I found in PDF/UA: “Artifacts shall be marked as such and shall not be tagged in the structure tree.”?

I would also appreciate opinions from any of you all in the accessibility community saying whether you think it’s important to remove repetitive headers and footers that interrupt the flow of text, as that could be helpful for me.

I want to see if I can justify erring on the accessibility side of a possible conflict between copyright/licensing versus accessibility.  (This is a situation where exceptions to copyright for people with disabilities wouldn’t apply.)

Please respond to me directly if you prefer.

Thank you!
Adina

Adina Mulliken
Associate Professor, Librarian Silberman Social Work and Urban Public Health Library
Hunter College, City University of New York
2180 3rd Ave. New York, NY
Phone 212-396-7665
Pronouns she/her
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