Making Bullets accessible in Tagged PDFs

We are designing a series of leafelets that need to be fully accessible tagged
pdfs. This is fine and (for my sins) I'm well versed in preparing the InDesign
document structure and tags accordingly. Two thing that keeps popping up their
ugly heads are...

a) Bullet points - Bullets within the indd document, when converted to tagged
pdf that Acrobat sees as 'inaccessible page content' in the full accessibility
report. How do I get round this issue. I have got round it before by setting
every bullet, manually in Acrobat, to a figure tag and given it the alt
attribute 'Bullet Point'. This is tedious to say the least and a bit of a
'bodge'. Is there a better way?

b) Auto convert an images tag from Figure to Artifact. None of the images and
tint boxes/backgrounds in this document need to be conveyed via assistive
technolgies - they are purely visual design elements. I hate having to go
through the 'patially' tagged pdf in acrobat and converting all the
images/graphics/backgrounds tags from figure to artifact. Is there a way of
globally setting this in the InDesign document, before I generate the pdf?

InDesign CS2, Acorobat Pro 7, Mac OSX 10.4.11

Update...

I've put an example online where the bullets are causing the issue with the full
access check.

 <http://www.pylondesign.co.uk/pdf/FINAL_17_TEST8.pdf>

UPDATE:

I have spent a long time trying to find an answer to this to no avail. I have
finally contacted Adobe Tech Support and explained the issue that concerns me
and I have had a response from a senior expert on
InDesign/Acrobat/Accessibility.

The issue is as follows:

When you prepare an InDesign document so that the generated tagged pdf is fully
accessible for screen readers and the like (create TOC, include bookmarks, add
document structure, tag untagged items, map styles to tags, tag uneccessary
content as artifacts, include alt tags for images etc.) the bullets in bulleted
lists cause the pdf to fail the Full Accessibility Check in Acrobat Pro. The
full accessibility report will flag bullets as 'Inaccessible Page Content - the
element is not contained within the document structure tree'. This is acceptable
from the targeted end user audience (viz those with impaired vision using screen
readers) because , as Acrobat states "Content that is not attached to the
structure tree will not be available via assistive technology like screen
readers." Well you don't really want the screen reader saying
"Bullet" or similar everytime it comes across one, do you?

The problem is that the pdf "fails" the full accessibility check and
when you are being paid to create fully accessible pdf's, this scares the client
somewhat.

The solution:

I explained the above to the Adobe expert and asked if there was an efficient
way, in InDesign CS2, to tag all "bullets" as artifacts so that they
would be ignored by screen readers AND be seen as artifacts by the Acrobat Pro
Full Accessibility Checker and hence pass the check. His answer was NO. I said
in the past I had tediously, laboriously gone through the documents in Acrobat
pro and marked every bullet as 'background' (= an artifact) to make it pass the
Full access checker successfully. Surely, I asked, there must be a simpler way
to do this? No, was his answer! "It's extremely cumbersome... but it's the
only way"

Dominic, you say you have experience in tagging...here's my question — I have
tags in place in CS2 Ind and export tagged pdf. All tags read in the document
correctly except 3...have been unable to find troubleshooting help. Any advice
would be appreciated.

Sue

You'd need to tell me in more detail what the problems were with the 3 tags that
were not 'read' correctly. What software/device/human are you using to 'read'
the tags in your document?