It is important to use list elements in Canvas courses where appropriate. Lists help users of assistive technology by allowing for users to interact with the list before reading through it, but also gives a quick visual reference to sighted users who are browsing course content. For users of assistive technology, the size of the list is immediately announced to the user so they understand how many items they will need to read through.

There are two main types of lists. Unordered lists, or ul in HTML, should be used when giving a list of related items where order is not semantically important. An example of a good use of an unordered list is a listing of useful resources. Ordered lists, or ol in HTML, should be used when the sequence of the list has sequential importance. A good example of an ordered list could be a process that can be followed to produce a final result.

Using a list such as the following…
* coffee
* bagel
* cream cheese

Will be read out to a screen reader user as “asterisk coffee, asterisk bagel, asterisk cream cheese.”

Be sure to use the tools built in to Canvas to create lists.