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Re: Definition Lists and Accessibility

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From: Olaf Drümmer
Date: Aug 20, 2015 2:07PM

I think this shows that definition lists were just ill conceived at the times when that concept was introduced.

If it had for example been called "key value pair list" everybody would have understood what it might be used for, without reading a single piece of specification. And we could use it for ingredient lists in cooking recipes, restaurant menus, price lists, … and of course definition lists.

I will embarrass myself here by admitting that I only learnt about definition lists a few years back when entering the field of accessible content. Before that, in tens of years of reading and writing lots of structured and not-so-well-structured content it never occurred to me that a concept like definition list is actually needed - other mechanisms would work sufficiently well, like nested lists or two column tables. And I guess there is a reason why (almost all?) authoring tools do not have a "definition list" formatting option. I can nonetheless see value in having a concept like "list of key value pairs" but still do believe it is not an indispensable concept when it comes to establishing a core set of tags for a language like HTML, rather it feels like an example of document-structure-over-engineering to me. I believe one can live a happy, document-rich life without ever thinking about definition lists…


Olaf



On 20 Aug 2015, at 19:23, _mallory < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> Regular user or novice, I would expect any AT to do the following at
> minimum:
>
> 1. correctly state the number of items by recognising that it's a
> DL (so not doubling the number of items)
> 2. offer some manner for users to know where the DT ends and the DD
> begins. Whether it's done like two separate paragraphs or something
> more crazy, I don't care: markup wise, it's perfectly allowed and
> legal to, for example, leave no spaces between tags.
>
> <hx>Foods</hx><dl><dt>Cheese</dt><dd>stuff about cheese, which may
> not even be a "proper" sentence; like car manuals</dd><dt>Etc...</dt>
> ...</dl>
>
> Any AT that cannot do at least as much as a browser in knowing the
> difference between "Cheese" and "stuff about cheese..." isn't doing
> the users any good.
>
> Now I'm not saying NVDA and VO don't, cause I dunno, but *if* it's
> true that there's no sane way for a user to differentiate the
> terms from the defs then I would consider using another markup
> setup. And I say this loving DLs with all my heart.
>
> So, has anyone done any recent user testing (novice..experienced
> SR users) with DLs? Recent indeed. I'd love to know.
>
> _mallory
>
> On Thu, Aug 20, 2015 at 02:37:46PM +0000, Moore,Michael (HHSC) wrote:
>> 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)
> > > >