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Re: no paragraphs in divs

for

From: Subhash Chhetri
Date: Jul 27, 2015 6:32AM

Hi Angela,

Whether you put content inside <div or <p tag, it does not make any difference in reading experience
Of JAWS and NVDA both.

Both JAWS and NVDA treat content inside div exactly as paragraph content, means using control+down/up arrow key, it is properly readable and navigable. JAWS user can also navigate to div content with quick navigation key "P".

Further more, I have verified your page with JAWS and NVDA both in IE and FF.

Although, I haven't tested it with talkback and voiceover, and any other screen reader.



Best Regards,
Subhash Chhetri
Software Accessibility QA Engineer

--------------------------------------------
On Mon, 27/7/15, Bo Nilsson < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

Subject: Re: [WebAIM] no paragraphs in divs
To: "'WebAIM Discussion List'" < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Date: Monday, 27 July, 2015, 2:14 PM

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

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

703-637-8957 (o)
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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
​
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