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RE: Unordered Lists

for

From: Thomas Jedenfelt
Date: Aug 12, 2005 11:12AM

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jan Eric Hellbusch"
Date: Mon, 8 Aug 2005
>
> > An informative and useful reference:
> > http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/unordered-lists
>
> Semantically seen, the message is absolutely right.
>
> But, screen readers I know (i.e. JAWS and some German products) treat UL as
> soup just as they do DIV. So, if you have an extendd unordered link list you
> will get one link after another without semantic information.
>
> Another problem with UL is that it is treated as part of the previous block
> element. So, if yoz have a paragraph followed by a UL the only way to get to
> the list is by first reading the paragraph (or heading).
>
> There are similar problems with DL.
>
> Not a problem is the use of OL. Even if you hide the list items they will be
> accessed by screen readers.
>
> Regs
> Jan


Regarding list of Links:

Jan Eric Hellbusch says that:
"JAWS and some German products treat UL as soup just as they do DIV."

What I can remember, I have read the same in some Web forums/articles.

Then, I cannot quite understand why Web sites - that focus on Web accessibility issues - use different coding techniques.

If links of UL, DIV and DL makes Web site Navigation more difficult for some people (only JAWS?), then why do these specific Web sites use them?

Can it be that they give higher priority to Technical issues (their interpretation of W3C's HTML Specification on mark-up and structuring content and WAI's WCAG) and/or Site Design, rather than User Experience tests?

_Non_ of the below Web sites use OL (as recommended by Jan, and others!?) for lists of Links.

It is very confusing, since the people at below Web sites are _highly_ skilled.

I wish I had the experience of using various versions of Braille, screen reader or voice browser. Then I would know.

Regards,
Thomas Jedenfelt


16 example Web sites (alphabetical),
Coding techniques of lists of Links:

ALA, A List Apart (http://www.alistapart.com/)
<ul>, <dd> containing <ul>

Accessify.com (http://www.accessify.com/)
<div>

AFB, American Foundation for the Blind (http://www.afb.org/)
<div> and <ul>

Dive Into Accessibility (http://diveintoaccessibility.org/)
<ul>

European Design for All e-Accessibility Network
(http://www.e-accessibility.org/)
Table cells (<td> for each link)

ICDRI, International Center for Disability Resources on the Internet
(http://www.icdri.org/)
Table cell with <br>

James Pickering Pages ( http://www.jp29.org/)
<div> and <ul>

Jukka Korpela (http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/)
<ul> and nested <ul>

NCBI, National Council for the Blind (http://www.ncbi.ie/)
<div> and <ul>

Soaring Eagle Communications (http://www.webaccessibility.biz/)
<div> and <ul>

University of Salford (http://www.salford.ac.uk/)
<div>, <ul> and nested <ul>

Vision Australia Foundation (http://www.visionaustralia.org.au/)
<div>, <ul> and nested <ul>

WaSP, The Web Standards Project (http://www.webstandards.org/)
<ul>, nested <ul> and <dl>

WAI, Web Accessibility Initiative (http://www.w3.org/)
<ul> (although also <ol>)

WATS.ca, Web Accessibility Testing and Services (http://www.wats.ca/)
<div> and <ul>

WebAIM (http://www.webaim.org/)
<div> and <ul>


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