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Re: no paragraphs in divs

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From: Bo Nilsson
Date: Jul 27, 2015 2:44AM

Hi folks!
As a Jaws-user for many years I Wish to argue for the use of paragraphs and other tags htat works like paragraphs in a screenreader. Tis because, in my opinion, paragraph navigation is by far the most effective way to listen to or skim a content. Ctrl+Down/Up arrow is my favourite keystroke in both web-pages and word-documents and also in well tagged pdf.
Perhaps, and unfortunately, some assistive devices d'ont fully support this type of navigation. Jaws, in any case, treats <div>, <p>, <li>, and perhaps some more, all as paragraphs from a user perspective and I think it is in most cases very efficient.
Bo Nilsson
Swedish list member
-----Ursprungligt meddelande-----
Från: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] För Jonathan Avila
Skickat: den 26 juli 2015 21:33
Till: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Ämne: Re: [WebAIM] no paragraphs in divs

> Divs are only for layout and styling purposes, they have no semantic value.

While I agree that the div element has no specific meaning and paragraph should be used, I do not believe this has been identified as a sufficient technique or failure of WCAG. Divs generally work the same way and commands such as control+up and down arrow treat them as container-like paragraphs. Screen readers seem to vary in how they handle this. Some screen readers/speech synthesizers put blank lines between paragraphs when arrowing between p elements. Others don't and simply rely on punctuation for pausing.

Jonathan

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Jonathan Avila
Chief Accessibility Officer
SSB BART Group
<EMAIL REMOVED>

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-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Guy Hickling
Sent: Saturday, July 25, 2015 5:04 PM
To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] no paragraphs in divs

As Dale has said, your actual content should be in a ul/li list. But to answer your last comment (and original question), yes, as you guessed, if these 3 items had been totally unrelated (and therefore not suitable for a
list) then they should have been placed in p elements, not divs.

Divs are only for layout and styling purposes, they have no semantic value.
Whereas paragraph elements indicate the separate stages of logical thought contained in the text - they are semantic. Assistive technology reacts to paragraphs (eg screen readers may pause very slightly, and/or change inflexion, at the end of a paragraph, but they don't do that for divs. Your
3 sentances would have been run together.

​Guy
​