Lists

Lists are a series of items, each starting on a new line, with bullets or numbers.

Lists make content accessible by breaking up sections, letting readers know that items are related, and making content easier to navigate. Lists are not just visually styled, but are marked up in the code and can be navigated with assistive technology tools.

Lists make digital content more accessible for people who use screen readers, are neurodivergent, and who benefit from good information design in general.

Using lists to create logical structure is required by digital accessibility standards, as described in 1.3.1 Info and Relationships.

Best Practices

When creating lists, use built-in tools to format your text as a list. Don’t just start new lines, or input special characters in place of bullets or numbers.

There are two types of lists:

  • Unordered lists (with bullets) for items that have no particular order
    • Use in general, unless order is required
  • Ordered lists (with numbers) for items that have a sequence or order
    • Use for steps in a process, instructions, or ranked items
    • Do not use when order is not important

Lists, when properly formatted, can have nested items. Use nested items to create hierarchy and relationships among items in a list.

Check Lists

When reviewing content, use an accessibility checker to determine if lists are used correctly. Some checkers can also identify text that looks like a list but needs to be tagged as a list in the code.

When editing content, use your word-processing tool to format text as a list. Almost all editing tools (MS Word, Google Docs, Google Slides, PowerPoint) have buttons or menu commands to format selected text as an unordered or ordered list. These tools will provide proper formatting.

On the web, WYSIWYG editors have options to format text as list. This applies the correct HTML tags, <ul> for unordered list, <ol> for ordered list, and <li> for each list item.

Examples

A bulleted list with nested structure:

  • Brick
  • Wood
    • Walnut
    • Oak
  • Concrete

An ordered list with instructions:

  1. Review application
  2. Gather materials
  3. Fill out form
  4. Submit