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Re: Definition Lists and Accessibility

for

From: Moore,Michael (HHSC)
Date: Aug 20, 2015 8:37AM

Was the person doing the testing an experienced screen reader user with a visual impairment or person with normal vision who uses a screen reader for testing?

I ask this because we often make a lot of assumptions about understandability without doing actual user testing. The result is that we overthink some things and make bad assumptions about others.

People who use screen readers or other assistive technologies daily, for access to information and services, not to "test for accessibility" have a much different experience than we sighted accessibility testers and our assumptions about what causes confusion and what does not is often wrong.

What is the purpose of the list? How will the list be used? Is the information well organized? Does the user know from context that this is a list of terms with multiple definitions for each term? Think of how a print dictionary is organized. The terms are in alphabetical order and each definition is prefaced by a number making it fairly obvious which is which. If there are a lot of terms is there a mechanism that separates them into logical groups making it easier to find the one that you want? This is like the tabs on the side of your print dictionary.

There is no hard and fast rule that says all glossary's or FAQ's or similar lists must be organized using a definition list, or that it must be a single list. Experiment with multiple options and test with real users including people with disabilities. I'll bet that you are surprised by the results. At the very least chances are that your end product is more usable for everyone. </rant>

Mike Moore
Accessibility Coordinator
Texas Health and Human Services Commission
Civil Rights Office
(512) 438-3431 (Office)
(512) 574-0091 (Cell)

-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Lynn Holdsworth
Sent: Thursday, August 20, 2015 9:14 AM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Definition Lists and Accessibility

Hi all,

Yesterday we tested a complex definition list with 3 screenreaders.

The list contained 6 terms, each with a whole bunch of definitions, making 347 items in all.

The screenreadders:
* JAWS correctly identified the list as a definition list with 6 items. But arrowing down the items in the list, it didn't flag up which items were terms and which were definitions, so the paradigm became very confusing.

* WindowEyes described it as a list with 347 items, but when arrowing through the list, it identified each item as a DT or DD, wich was very helpful.

* NVDA, like WindowEyes,picks up a list with 347 items, and like Jaws doesn't differentiate between terms and definitions, offering a worst of both worlds scenario.

* VoiceOver: we only did a quick test with VoiceOver on a Mac, but it seemed to behave in a way similar to NVDA.

I sympathise with the school of thought that says we should always use semantic mark-up and not come up with hacky work-arounds for screenreaders; but in this scenario, where the lack of support in all screenreaders is likely to cause serious confusion, I would report the bug and opt for a work-around. I'm advising the client to use either nested lists or headings for terms followed by lists of definitions.

Best, Lynn

On 16/08/2015, Guy Hickling < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> Don't mess up your HTML markup (and risk causing problems for users of
> those products that do it correctly) to try to cater for the
> shortcomings of a particular screen reader or AT, because while you
> are doing that the manufacturer is probably updating their product to
> do the correct thing anyway! - and if they don't, and they allow their
> product to to fall too far behind other similar products, people will
> soon stop using them and the problem will have been solved for you.
> Regards,
> Guy
> > > archives at http://webaim.org/discussion/archives
> >