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Number of posts in this thread: 7 (In chronological order)

From: Michael.Moore
Date: Thu, Apr 07 2011 8:09AM
Subject: Re: SPAM?:Re: evaluating accessibility with WCAG 2.0
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I respectfully disagree with Jason and John and agree with Andrew. The standard is open to interpretation in this case. I reread understanding 1.3.1 http://www.w3.org/TR/UNDERSTANDING-WCAG20/content-structure-separation-programmatic.html and noted that the idea is to preserve semantic meaning that is presented through visual or auditory formatting. In this case we have a row of links separated by pipe characters. Is that really a visual presentation of a list? If you were to show the page to several people who are not web developers or accessibility folks and asked them to point out lists on the page, how many of them would point to that group of links?

If I were conducting the evaluation, I would make a note in the report that best practice would be to place the links in a list and include the benefits of placing them in the list. The recipients of the report should be made aware that this item falls into a gray area within the guidelines and that it is their call as to whether or not to make the change.

Mike Moore
(512) 424-4159

From: Angela French
Date: Thu, Apr 07 2011 12:45PM
Subject: Re: evaluating accessibility with WCAG 2.0
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Thanks for your thoughts everyone in this thread.

Angela French

From: Karen Sorensen
Date: Fri, Apr 08 2011 12:30PM
Subject: Re: evaluating accessibility with WCAG 2.0 (Angela French)
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Good reminder John Hicks. The separation of content from
design/layout/format with CSS is critical. If the pipes are used to separate
a list, but the list isn't HTML coded as a list, that would be interpreted
incorrectly by a screen reader.

Karen Sorensen
PCC Instructional Technology Specialist
Coordinating ADA Compliance of Instructional Media
971-722-4720

From: Andrew Kirkpatrick
Date: Fri, Apr 08 2011 3:03PM
Subject: Re: evaluating accessibility with WCAG 2.0 (Angela French)
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I do agree that this is a best practice, but I don't believe that this rises to the level where it would be required by WCAG 2.0. It is pretty easy to start seeing lists everywhere, but should any time that there is more than one link in a row a ul element be used?

My gut is that, for example, with a list of links at the bottom of a page that there is more benefit from the use of a list for the developer implementing consistent styling than for a user with a disability. I don't know of any study that digs into whether there is a difference for end users but it would be interesting to see.

If people feel that not using a UL element constitutes a failure, please submit it to the WCAG working group and we can debate it and produce an official failure technique if the consensus is that it should be a failure.

Thanks,
AWK

Andrew Kirkpatrick
Group Product Manager, Accessibility
Adobe Systems

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http://blogs.adobe.com/accessibility

From: Angela French
Date: Fri, Apr 08 2011 4:51PM
Subject: Re: evaluating accessibility with WCAG 2.0 (Angela French)
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IN the particular example I presented, wouldn't the user perceive it as a non-sensical sentence?

From: Keith (mteye)
Date: Fri, Apr 08 2011 5:27PM
Subject: Re: evaluating accessibility with WCAG 2.0 (Angela French)
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I know what you are talking about when you say it would be incorrectly
interpreted by a screen reader. However, the screen reader actually will
intpret it for what it is, a series of inline text that happens to have a
mixture of text and hyperlinks. It then relies on the user's mental feedback
to determine what it is. Userfeed being the variable that is often the
weakest, and widest open to interpretation and control.

I've done this same thing often myself, and it's a habit that I'm breaking.
It's just a quick and dirty way to slap out a quick "Link bar" at the end of
a page, for example. List elements are the way to go. It may be that a self
trained html coder isn't aware of the method to create horizontal lists,
rather than a vertical list (default behavior for browsers.) There's no
excuse for someone claiming to be a professional web designer.

Just a personal observation, and opinion.

from
Keith H

From: Angela French
Date: Fri, Apr 08 2011 5:33PM
Subject: Re: evaluating accessibility with WCAG 2.0 (Angela French)
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Agreed.