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
