Dear Nick,
@ "Have you considered using lists in the form? Prettier accessible forms has some useful ideas."
No I haven't. I read the ALA article with interest. But after reading the ALA article I see major differences between the simple form example they show and the much more complex Moodle forms like course edit or the admin forms.
Where do you see the advantage in using <ol> and <li> as containers against <div>? With CSS you can handle many container types nearly the same, you can even tell some to behave like another type as you often do with the <ul> and <li> tags.
In the complex Moodle forms we must handle <ol> and <li> like <div> and loose any advantage they have in simple forms. These easily can be thought as lists of items. Complex forms I would never perceive mainly as a list.
From the semantic point of view fieldsets with legends and the label/item pairs give an optimal impression about the type of information you deal with. What is the advantage to add another semantical level with the information that you work with a list especially when there is no "real" list?
I see <ol> and <li> only as another option to get the same result as the one Jamie showed. Nick, I am very interested to hear about the advantages you see.
The argument that some screen readers inform about the number of items in <ol> is interesting indeed. But does it really help when I know that there are 3 or 7 or 2 items following? I don't know.
One point to keep in mind is that the descriptions could have lists too and then we may face a similar situation as in the Moodle course pages. There you must be very careful with lists in your content and the CSS for them.
Looking forward to your answer
Urs