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Accessibility Toolkit for Open Educational Resources (OER): Lists

Accessibility guide for creating OER

Accessibility Information on Lists

General Information:

Semantic Lists (ordered and unordered) provide orientation for users by organizing information in meaningful ways.

Why lists are important?

  • Use different types of lists to group information according to its nature to provide orientation for users.
  • When list are used correctly, assistive technologies are able to convey information to their users as they navigate to and within lists, such as the total number of items and the relative position of each item in the list.
  • Lists are recommended as potential replacements for simple tables, as tables can be more difficult to navigate and sometimes we provide info in tables that really would be better suited to lists.
  • Semantic lists helps users perceive, operate,  and understand, POUR principles.

How to create accessible semantic lists?

  • Use the built in “lists” option in WYSIWYG editors (what you see is what you get) to create lists.
  • Don’t create lists by manually typing in numbers or indenting, these are not accessible.
  • Create Ordered Lists <ol> for when there is a defined sequence or order intended for the items in the list.
  • Create Unordered Lists <ul> for when there is no specific order intended for the list you are creating.
  • Create Description Lists <dl> for when a specific structure is needed to provide definitions for terms.

Platform Specific list instructions

Lists need to be formatted using the list tool.

Create bulleted and numbered lists using the formatting options in the Brightspace editor.

Using the built-in formatting options ensures that screen readrs will read the content in the correct order and identify structured text from body text. If the text is not formatted using this tool, a screen reader will read it as if it were sentences on a page and the context will not be conveyed.

  1. Select/highlight the content you want to make into a list.
  2. Then on the Brightspace editor toolbar, click on the Bulleted List icon if you want a bulleted list or select Numbered List from the drop-down menu if the order does matter.

Brightspace screen showing steps on how to make accessible lists.

  • Do not create lists or tables manually, use the built in formatting.

screengrab showing how to create lists or tables in libguides.

If you want to create a description list, you need to select the <source> button and type in the code for a definition list (<dl>,<dt>, <dd>)

  • Do not create lists or tables manually, use the built in formatting.

screengrab showing how to add a list in guttenberg

  • Do not create lists manually, use the built in formatting.

screengrab showing lists area in wordpress classic.

Screengrab of blackboard edit ribbon to add lists.

  • Use the build in list styles to create lists.
  • Do not manually create lists by inserting a number or a star.

Pro Tip

Add a period "." at the end of each list item, this lets the screen reader know the end of the list item has been reached and pauses before going onto the next list item.

Creative Commons LicenseUnless otherwise noted, these accessibility guides were created by Accessibility Librarian Amy Wolfe for CUNY and are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. If you re-use, remix or link to this guide, it would be appreciated if you could notify the creator Accessibility Librarian Amy Wolfe.