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Re: Accessible P Tag Usage

for

From: Jonathan Avila
Date: Mar 21, 2019 6:10PM

> But how do you define "best"? Tangible advantages? Ability in some AT to jump to next paragraph that may not be available if marked as <div>?

Both NVDA and JAWS move to next and prior divs with the same command as paragraphs control+down and control+up arrows -- there appears to be no difference. I'm not sure that a JAWS or NVDA user would have any idea if a div or paragraph was used on a webpage without looking at code.

Jonathan

Jonathan Avila, CPWA

-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of Patrick H. Lauke
Sent: Wednesday, March 20, 2019 11:48 AM
To: Mallory < <EMAIL REMOVED> >; <EMAIL REMOVED>
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Accessible P Tag Usage

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On 20/03/2019 12:14, Mallory wrote:
> When I audit, I may make a note or warning (not a violation) if divs are used instead of paragraphs for what looks like paragraphs.
> Two reasons:
> 1. some AT can use <p> tags for navigation (again, this is a Low-prio
> thing) 2. The new Text Spacing for some reason decided to specify paragraphs. Why it didn't say "blocks of text" like 1.4.8 talks about, I dunno.
> As a user, making a difference between "blocks of text" vs "Spacing following paragraphs to at least 2 times the font size" seems silly: either you care about what I see as a bunch of text or not.

Note that WCAG's language is not HTML specific, but tech-agnostic. So when it talks about "paragraphs", it doesn't necessarily mean "<p>"
elements (the same way that when it talks about "labels" for form controls, it doesn't necessarily mean "<label>" elements, but any text that acts as a (visual) label for a control).

> As an auditor, I feel free to be as draconian as I want, since we don't waste too much time on "compliance-only" customers. We put the effort into the ones who want their stuff to work best. We tell the latter group that it's best to use paragraph tags for paragraphs.

But how do you define "best"? Tangible advantages? Ability in some AT to jump to next paragraph that may not be available if marked as <div>?

P
--
Patrick H. Lauke

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