All Sites | Universities of Wisconsin

News | Universities of Wisconsin

Charter Schools for Wisconsin | Creating Opportunity & Equity

Future First-Year Student (Freshman) | Unlimited Opportunity

Academic Calendars

We Lead | Unlimited Opportunity

About Us | Universities of Wisconsin

Veterans

Our Impact | Universities of Wisconsin

Careers at UW | Human Resources

Lists (e.g., `<ul>` or `<ol>`) should only contain list items (`<li>`) as a direct descendant 
to ensure that screen readers can accurately report the amount of items contained in the list. 

## Example

In the following example, some screen readers would say this list has two items, instead of 
four: 

```html
<ul>
    <div class="some_class">
        <li>Example 1</li>
    </div>
    <div class="some_other_class">
        <li>Example 2</li>
        <li>Example 3</li>
        <li>Example 4</li>
    </div>
</ul>
```

To fix this, you would need to remove the `<div class="some_class">` and 
`<div class="some_other_class>` elements and ensure only `<li>` list items remain.

## Further reading

The [formal specification for the list element](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/ul)
shows what is and is not permitted inside an `<ul>` and `<ol>`.

See [Technique H88](https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20-TECHS/H88.html) for more information.

list-not-following-semantics

April 2025

March 2025

University of Wisconsin System

Title / URL	Issues
All Sites \| Universities of Wisconsinwww.wisconsin.edu/all-sites/	22
News \| Universities of Wisconsinwww.wisconsin.edu/news/	1
Charter Schools for Wisconsin \| Creating Opportunity & Equitywww.wisconsin.edu/oeo/	1
Future First-Year Student (Freshman) \| Unlimited Opportunitywww.wisconsin.edu/students/first-year/	1
Academic Calendarswww.wisconsin.edu/academic-calendars/	1
We Lead \| Unlimited Opportunitywww.wisconsin.edu/students/we-lead/	1
About Us \| Universities of Wisconsinwww.wisconsin.edu/about/	1
Veteranswww.wisconsin.edu/veterans/	1
Our Impact \| Universities of Wisconsinwww.wisconsin.edu/our-impact/	1
Careers at UW \| Human Resourceswww.wisconsin.edu/ohrwd/careers/	1

Ensure lists are marked up correctly

University of Wisconsin System

Where this issue has occurred