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Re: Definition Lists and Accessibility

for

From: Léonie Watson
Date: Aug 16, 2015 2:57AM

> From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ]
> On Behalf Of Dennis Deacon
> Sent: 15 August 2015 20:48
>
> One more question: would there be a way to use definition lists for semantic
> purposes, while temporarily hacking them so screen readers don't become
> confused?

Not that I can think of - at least not without disturbing those screen readers that do support definition lists properly, or reducing UX for others in different ways.

One option might be to use a <ul> with something like "term = definition" as the content of each <li>. It would be announced as a standard list by screen readers, but that would mean that people using screen readers that do support definition lists would lose that information. The equals sign would provide a visual indication of the relationship between the term and the definition, but there's a chance some screen readers wouldn't announce the equals sign because of variable punctuation settings.

Which leads me back to thinking that using the right markup for the job is probably the best bet in the scheme of things.

Léonie.

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Senior accessibility engineer @PacielloGroup @LeonieWatson