On the

(https://benmyers.dev/blog/on-the-dl/)

I learned a few new-to-me things about the

element from this article by Ben Meyer:

• A

can be followed by multiple

• You can optionally group the

and

elements in a

for styling - but only a

.

• You can label them using ARIA.

• They’ve been called “description lists”, not “definition lists”, since an HTML5 draft in 2008 (https://www.w3.org/TR/2008/WD-html5-20080122/#the-dl). So this is valid:

Credits

Author

Jeffrey Zeldman

Ethan Marcotte

Here’s a useful note from Adrian Roselli on screen reader support for description lists (https://adrianroselli.com/2025/01/updated-brief-note-on-description-list-support.html).

Via Hacker News (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48247325)

Tags: css (https://simonwillison.net/tags/css), html (https://simonwillison.net/tags/html), screen-readers (https://simonwillison.net/tags/screen-readers), web-standards (https://simonwillison.net/tags/web-standards)

• Reference: https://simonwillison.net/2026/May/23/on-the-dl/#atom-everything

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