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Re: Empty <P> Tags For Spacing

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From: Lars Ballieu Christensen
Date: Feb 8, 2022 10:36AM

Even if the p-element contains a Unicode character 000D, very few people would consider this to qualify as a paragraph.

In my opinion, there are two basic rules for creating accessible content: 1.. Use the tools/technologies/features as intended; and (2) Do not abuse tools/technologies/features for things that they were not intended for.

The p-element was never intended to create (visual) space; it is a structural element intended to span and identify a paragraph. Any other use is, in my humble opinion, abuse.

Venligst/Kind regards

Lars
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Lars Ballieu Christensen
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On 08/02/2022, 18.24, " <EMAIL REMOVED> on behalf of <EMAIL REMOVED> " < <EMAIL REMOVED> on behalf of <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

The <p> tag itself contains "real content" because it holds Unicode character 000D = CR/carriage return, which is part of the set of control characters in content and Unicode.

It may be invisible, but it's there nonetheless. Select a blank <P> tag in a PDF, expand it to show its yellow content container box, and the hidden character is highlighted in blue. Invisible or not, there's something there inside the <P> tag.

The purpose of our accessibility standards — WCAG, PDF/UA, EPUB, etc. — is to specifically define how to remove ALL barriers for those using assistive technologies. (And for all humans using any other technology, too.)

At a minimum, blank returns are a nuisance to the humans trying to read and navigate the document. But there are technologies where these blank returns cause reflow problems that in turn, create full-blown accessibility barriers to some users.

It's the responsibility of BOTH the accessibility standards AND the assistive technologies to deal with these. Therefore, ban them in the standards and require the A T manufacturers to also deal with them for their users.

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-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of Duff Johnson
Sent: Tuesday, February 8, 2022 10:13 AM
To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Empty <P> Tags For Spacing

That's an interesting perspective.

Do blank lines (zero characters between <p> and </p>) actually constitute... “content”?

I agree - of course - that they aren't best-practice, but it's not obvious (at least to me) why they are relevant to accessibility such that its a WCAG failure to include them.

I would rather expect that the correct thing for AT to do is to ignore them in all cases. If one does not take this view then other nasty possibilities arise… such as authors using “dummy” empty h# elements to “help" with document structure… or using empty <tr> to somehow “separate” tables… and on and on. Yuck.

I'sll toss out a strawman: in order to be represented by AT a given structure element should contain, at minimum, a space character.

Duff.

> On Feb 8, 2022, at 09:51, Lars Ballieu Christensen < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>
> In my opinion, use of p-elements to achieve a certain visual presentation is a WCAG 2.1 violation (1.3.1); p-elements are intended to define paragraphs.. As blank lines are not semantically paragraphs, such use represents incorrect markup of content.
>
>
> On 08/02/2022, 15.01, "WebAIM-Forum on behalf of Duff Johnson" < <EMAIL REMOVED> on behalf of <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>
>> On Feb 8, 2022, at 01:05, Steve Green < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>>
>> 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?
>
> …and even if it does have an impact it seems like a AT problem, not a file-format issue.
>
>> 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.
>
> IMO, this is a description of what screen-readers are choosing to do… and they should choose otherwise. That a PDF might include an empty <P> does not force AT to present it.
>
>> 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.
>
> Yes; people use paragraphs within lists. It is for this reason that PDF 2.0 includes the concept of a “Continued list” to provide support for this very common use-case.
>
> Duff.
> > > > >
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