Design Notebook

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Points to Ponder

Lists

Did you know that lists can have a title attribute? From a semantic point of view, it makes perfect sense that lists should have something equivalent to a caption attribute in tables since lists seldom have meaning by themselves. Imagine bringing up a Webpage and finding the only content on the page is the following list with no explanation:

  1. Bananas
  2. Grapefruits
  3. Tangerines

With no caption, title, or explanation, you might well wonder what that's all about. As in this example, the preceding paragraph actually serves as the caption for the paragraph but I've included a title attribute that your browser might display if you hover over the list..

Where lists are used as navigation menus, there may be no text explaining the list because the explanation is clear based on the visual context, but visual context is not a helpful clue for readers who are blind. In this case, an actual caption might be helpful. It might, for example, be hidden for screen presentation but visible for aural presentation.

Tables

Did you know that tables have a summary attribute? The summary attribute can help persons using screen readers by providing "a brief overview of how a data table is organized or a brief example of how to navigate the table" according to W3C: H73: Using the summary attribute of the table element to give an overview of data tables.