Technique T2:Using standard text formatting conventions for lists
Applicability
Plain text documents. Not applicable to technologies that contain markup.
This technique relates to 1.3.1: Info and Relationships (Sufficient when used with Making information and relationships conveyed through presentation programmatically determinable or available in text using the following techniques: ).
Description
The objective of this technique is to use text formatting conventions to create simple lists of related items. Hierarchical lists or nested lists cannot be represented using this technique and should be represented using a different technology.
A list is a sequence of list items. A list item is a paragraph that begins with a label. For unordered lists, asterisks, dashes, and bullet characters may be used as the label, but the same label characters must be used for all the items in a list. For ordered lists, the label may be alphabetic or numeric, and may be terminated by a period or a right parenthesis. The labels must be in ascending order, that is,
- numbers must be in numeric order,
- alphabetic labels must be in alphabetical order or in numeric order when interpreted as Roman numerals.
Examples
Example 1: Unordered list
- unordered list item - unordered list item - unordered list item
Example 2: Numeric ordered list
1. Ordered list item 2. Ordered list item 3. Ordered list item
Example 3: Roman numeral ordered list
i. Ordered list item ii. Ordered list item iii. Ordered list item iv. Ordered list item
Example 4: Alphabetic ordered list
A) Ordered list item B) Ordered list item C) Ordered list item
Tests
Procedure
For each list in the text content
- Check that each list item is a paragraph that starts with a label
- Check that the list contains no lines that are not list items
- Check that all list items in a list use the same style label
- Check that the labels in ordered lists are in sequential order
- Check that the labels in each unordered list are the same
Expected Results
- All checks above are all true.