RE: is there any accessibility downside to having role="list" on an ul element?

David,

I have seen testers fail list markup because navigating the list using a screen reader doesn't announce 'bullet' or what is considered to be a relevant marker description using any of SC1.1.1 SC1.3.1, or SC1.3.1.

In my mind, there are 3 things at play : the role of the list itself, the roles of each list item, and the 'structure conveyed by presentation' which is either synonymous with list' or complementary to it.

if the 'structure conveyed by presentation' is complementary to the role semantics of being a list, then the marker and LF/CR convey that structure and are therefore subject to SC1.3.1 by my way of thinking.

The proposition 'a list is a structure' is true, but its biconditional 'a structure is a list' is false which means list and structure cannot be synonymous.

My contention is that notions of semantics in WCAG 2.x whether structural or inline or whatever remain unspecified and not well understood by designers, implementers, and testers. 

Attention all screen reader users - mind the gaps!

-----Original Message-----
From: David Woolley <forums@david-woolley.me.uk> 
Sent: Wednesday, May 8, 2024 10:06 PM
To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Subject: Re: is there any accessibility downside to having role="list" on an ul element?

On 08/05/2024 02:50, Adam Cooper wrote:
> So which bit is the so-called semantics? The descriptions of the type 
> of marker such as ‘bullet’ or ‘square’ or the LF/CR at the end of each 
> list item? Or even the navigability that screen readers include such 
> as using ‘l’ and ‘I’ quick keys in JAWS and NVDA?
> 


I would say the primary semantics are that it is an item in a list.  The marker is a matter of presentation, and even the newline, at the end, is presentation.  Really the marker should be an attribute of the list, not the individual item, but is a presentational issue, as the list level should be shown by the nesting level.

Received on Thursday, 9 May 2024 01:17:14 UTC