RE: 4.13.1 Bread crumb navigation - use of right angle brackets

Reinier Kaper wrote:

“Anyway, back on topic, the only really semantically sound way of writing a
breadcrumb is (unfortunately) nested lists:

 

<ol>

  <li>Products

    <ol>

      <li>Dishwashers

        <ol>

          <li>Bosch</li>

        </ol>

      </li>

    </ol>

  </li>

</ol>

 

Which would render in a way similar to:

1. Products

  1.1 Dishwashers

    1.1.1 Bosch

 

Take note of the actual hierarchy here, which is the right translation of a
breadcrumb.

However, it's extremely ugly from a code point of view, not to mention very
hard to read. I also doubt many people would follow this pattern as it's far
from elegant. Besides I'm not sure if there would be any real benefit for
screen-readers to mark it up this way.”

 

Nested lists are about the only way to convey the right hierarchical meaning
to screen readers. There may be a case for using unordered lists instead of
ordered lists though.

 

These days a breadcrumb is really a fragment of the core navigation. The
core navigation for a site is rarely marked up using ordered lists, so in
the interests of consistency and familiarity, it may be better to follow the
same basic design pattern for a breadcrumb?

 

Léonie.

 

Carpe diem