Re: Lists and Headers

Shane, I don't think any special markup is required in this case. I 
definitely would not put aria-describedby on every item; that would be 
verbosity night mare.

Typically, a "very long" list is going to be part of adocument that is 
going to have sections. Since the section has a title, that provides 
context. Some screen readers make it easy to know what section of a 
document you are in. For example, when reading the current title on a web 
page with the JAWS command insert+t, JAWS tells you the title of the 
current section in addition to the title of the window.

Alternatively, it is easy to do the sighted equivalent of "looking 
around". Just mark your current reading place, also a function provided by 
many readers, and "look around" by jumping to the beginning of the list, 
the beginning of the section, etc. After taking 2 seconds to look around, 
return to your marked place.

I believe that screen readers should all make it easy for users to 
understand their current context by taking advantage of document 
structure. The author should not have to provide any redundant markup to 
do the same. Headings, landmark regions, etc. are there to help screen 
readers do this. And, their relationship to a list inside a document is 
manifest to the screen reader by the accessibility tree.

Matt King
IBM Senior Technical Staff Member
I/T Chief Accessibility Strategist
IBM BT/CIO - Global Workforce and Web Process Enablement 
Phone: (503) 578-2329, Tie line: 731-7398
mattking@us.ibm.com



From:   Shane McCarron <shane@aptest.com>
To:     "W3C WAI Protocols & Formats" <public-pfwg@w3.org>, 
Date:   04/02/2015 06:55 AM
Subject:        Lists and Headers
Sent by:        ahby@aptest.com



Question: If you were going to annotate a list (ul, dl, ol) so that it had 
some sort of description, and do it in an A11Y way, how would you do it?  
I am thinking especially of long lists where a URI might point into the 
middle of it, and it might be challenging for a non-sighted user to 
quickly understand the context.  aria-describedby on each item?  A caption 
(if captions worked for lists)?

-- 
Shane McCarron
Managing Director, Applied Testing and Technology, Inc.