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Re: A list of one?

for

From: John Foliot
Date: Nov 19, 2008 2:00PM

Michael D. Roush wrote:
>
> It strikes me that what you are using as third-level headers are
> probably a list of items as well (with the names of new employees as a
> sub-list).
>
> I also had a thought that maybe these really aren't lending themselves
> to headers and lists, but a set of definition terms and definitions.
> The office is the definition term, and the new employee (or the list of
> employees) is the content of the definition tag. This would keep a
> semantic association between the office and the name/names, without
> requiring a single-item list where it isn't warranted.


Without actually seeing an example, I suspect either solution to the first
part (h3 vs. dt) might be appropriate. Personally, I would likely lean
towards using the h3 construct as it would generally afford an easier
mechanism for inter-page navigation: the h3's being locales that could be
quickly accessed by bringing up a list of headers: all locales being
equal, thus all h3s (you could extend this exponentially if you had
locales in multiple states, where State name could be h2's) - the point
being that the headers architecture is just another way of thinking of
hierarchal listings.

As for individual locales - absolutely use a ul of one li. As others have
noted, it is simply a list of one thing. More importantly, if other h3s
have lists of multiple items, then all h3s of similar use should maintain
the list structure: this would be a satisfaction of WCAG 1, Priority 2
#13.4 Use navigation mechanisms in a consistent manner. Even if you chose
to use the definition list, many of the descriptions (<dd>) would contain
an unordered list still, and I would argue that for this reason each <dd>
should have the same basic structure, again even if the list only had one
list item.

JF
===========================John Foliot
Program Manager
Stanford Online Accessibility Program
http://soap.stanford.edu
Stanford University
Tel: 650-862-4603

Soap Is a program directed by the
Vice Provost for Student Affairs
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