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Re: Empty <P> Tags For Spacing

for

From: Steve Green
Date: Feb 7, 2022 11:05PM

I'm not convinced it's a WCAG non-conformance, and I'm not sure it's even a nuisance. Does it have any impact on anyone?

Empty <P> tags are a big problem in PDFs, though. They cause JAWS (and possibly other screen readers) to say "blank", which we regard as a user experience issue, not a WCAG non-conformance. More importantly, if they occur in lists, they break the list structure, which definitely is a WCAG non-conformance. We see this a lot in PDFs created in Word and PowerPoint.

Steve Green
Managing Director
Test Partners Ltd


-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of Peter Shikli
Sent: 08 February 2022 04:48
To: WebAIM Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: [WebAIM] Empty <P> Tags For Spacing

The use of empty <p> tags to provide space between paragraphs in a webpage...Is this a strict violation in the WCAG principles, or is it something that is just a nuisance and could be “suggested” as a removal to the owner of the page?

I couldn't find any answers in my resources about CSS and HTML failures.
The closest I came was the technique G115: Using semantic elements to mark up structure, which specifies: “The objective of this technique is to mark up the structure of the Web content using the appropriate semantic elements. In other words, the elements are used according to their meaning, not because of the way they appear visually.”

Am I looking at this in the correct manner, and/or are there other techniques, or a hard and fast rule that I can apply when I am examining a webpage? I really appreciate the help.

Peter Shikli on behalf of analyst
Danielle Cox
Access2online Inc.
www.access2online.com
Prison inmates helping the internet become accessible