Bullets Between Inline List Items — The Accessible Way!

Screen readers read pseudo elements (::before and ::after) and using bullets in them will cause it to read something like “Pizza MIDDLE DOT Döner MIDDLE DOT Kaffee”. Not good. Let’s try to fix it.

The Wrong Way

ul {
  list-style: none;
}
li {
  display: inline;
}
li + li::before {
  content: " · ";
}

<ul>
  <li>Pizza <span aria-hidden="true"> · </span></li>
  <li>Döner <span aria-hidden="true"> · </span></li>
  <li>Kaffee</li>
</ul>

Though this method is simple, it’s not accessible. Screen readers will pronounce each bullet as a middle dot or something similar.

The Accessible Way

ul {
  list-style: none;
}
li {
  display: inline;
}

This solution works great for screen readers, but granted, keeping things like list bullets in the markup seems a little dirty. Using a text character as a bullet is really the only accessible solution.

Conclusion

Both solutions don’t look great on small screens when items can’t fit on a single line. This case is a good reminder for us to be more mindful about the accessibility of our sites and apps. We should do at least the basic accessibility testing and don’t always trust our intuition, like I did with this list, was wrong, and shipped inaccessible features to production.