Bullet points are often used for formatting purposes—however, to a screen reader they look like blocks of unparseable text.

Use bullet points only for lists

Screenreaders see paragraphs sorted by bullet points at blocks of text. This effectively disables a screen reader from skipping around to find information, and forces users to listen to the whole paragraph. 

Example 1:

In this example, we see that bullet points are used to delineate the different forms available for download on the site. Visually, this page is easy to understand. However, to a screen reader, these are just blocks of text with random links interspersed throughout the page. 

How it was made compliant:

• Removing the bullet points
• Assigning a heading to each downloadable form, enabling screen reader users to have the screen reader read out the name of every document.

Example 2:

In this page, bullet points are used to format paragraphs of text that would be better served by being defined by headings.

How it was made compliant:

• Removing bullet points
• Reading through content to understand the context, and applying headings judiciously while staying faithful to the original content. In this example, headings were added to provide structure to the page.