- From: Dave Hodder <dmh@dmh.org.uk>
- Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2008 22:41:02 +0000
- To: public-html-comments@w3.org
David Bailey wrote: > This sounds like an good idea and I can see a number of uses, not least > the example you gave. My only issue is that this functionality could be > reproduced with <span>, or the <ul><li> combo and a CSS rule to remove > list-style formatting, or by separating lines into individual > paragraphs: > > http://users.bathspa.ac.uk/baid1/personal/clean-css-form.html In practice when I use HTML today I use the 'p' element, much as you have in your example above. Looking at the results on screen, however, I suspect very few regular people would think of them as "paragraphs" -- they're lines within a form, hence the 'l' element. I've seen people use the <ul><li> approach too, but I think it stretches the definitions a bit too far. (I'd have a preference for using the semantically meaningless block element <div> over its cousin, the semantically meaningless inline element <span>, simply because of what happens when you turn CSS off (View > Page Style > No Style within Firefox) or when you view from a text-only browser such as Lynx.) > ... the question is, which method has the most semantic meaning? Would > a screen reader client differentiate <l> from <span>, <p> or <ul><li> > when annunciating/pronouncing the text? How does this add meaning to > the page when analysed by a search engine? With the use of <p> I believe screen readers usually pause in their speech; with <li> they announce "Item!" or similar, which isn't particularly useful when you're trying to navigate through or fill in a form. Thanks, Dave
Received on Monday, 18 February 2008 22:41:23 UTC