WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Empty <P> Tags For Spacing

for

From: Guy Hickling
Date: Feb 8, 2022 4:15PM

A couple of comments here have said that screen readers should not
announce "blank" for empty paragraphs (which I see on websites in some
screen readers, as well as in Pdf documents).

But this is the kind of problem that arises when we create bad markup.
Basically, any wrong or non-standard or questionable HTML is likely to
cause assistive devices to produce poor quality results, as in this case.

What a screen reader does is not in our control - and in any case they are
unlikely to change very quickly just because we criticise them here! But
creating good HTML markup is in our control. Rather than pushing the
responsibility for doing right onto others, we should put our own house in
order first!

So to get back to the question, I would advise against empty elements as
best practice, but it isn't a WCAG matter.