Read-only plain text values in Constellation can be introduced through various means, such as partial views, read-only text fields, and properties in the case summary panel of a work object.

For plain text properties such as these, Pega generates  <dl> description list tags, containing description terms <dt> and description definitions <dd>. The description term serves as the key, and the description definition serves as the value.

You might notice that the markup of these tags in the screenshot also contains the role="none" attribute, which removes the innate semantic role of the HTML tag the attribute is used on. Originally, the description list markup was chosen to provide a relationship between read-only data values, where each pair of values logically correlates to each other.

However, user feedback and testing results showed that the use of description list markup could introduce confusing and potentially verbose output from screen readers based on how they interpret the semantics. What would otherwise be simple plain text on the page, navigable in Browse/Read mode with screen reader, suddenly becomes several individual instances of lists with list items. Considering how widespread these value pairs are in a given application, this introduced more complexity than intended.

Take this example of a rich text editor field displayed as read-only.

The definition, or value, contains both plain text and a link. A screen reader user navigating the page with the Tab key would hear output along the lines of “list with 1 item, regional cuisine link” when bringing keyboard focus to this link. Realistically there is no logical list structure to traverse here, but due to the tags being used, users may not be aware of this and believe otherwise.

To mitigate this, we have added the role="none" attribute to suppress the resulting list and listitem role structure generated through <dl>, <dt>, and <dd> tags. This does not functionally change the behavior of the properties in any way but prevents screen readers from interpreting each instance as a list with list items. Instead, such values are treated as plain text on the page, navigable in Browse/Read mode.

Automated testing tools such as aXe DevTools may flag the usage of this role incorrect if Best Practices are included in the testing criteria. The use of this role should not introduce accessibility issues or with assistive technology or barriers to understanding the content contained within.