p vs. ol or ul for form styling

Question

Typically I style forms with the unordered list tag e.g.

    

        

            Name         


        

Answer 1

The key things that the W3C lay out for forms is that the Form is set up in a way that the labels and form elements can be easily grouped programatically:

1.3.1 Info and Relationships: Information, structure, and relationships conveyed through presentation can be programmatically determined or are available in text.

In particular HTML Technique 44: Using label elements and HTML Technique 71: Providing a description.

The advantage you get from wrapping each label and input in a list item is that the user with a screen reader may well get some indication at the begining that the list has x items in it, which might be useful.

Generally though our designers are with Zack - our form rows are wrapped in a div, with a class of "formrow" or similar.