AvatarGroup and Avatar use unstructured markup

[paulschreiber]

Duplicates

• I have searched the existing issues

Latest version

• I have tested the latest version

Current behavior 😯

Currently, AvatarGroup and Avatar generate <div>s for markup, which is not semantic/structured.

<div class="MuiAvatarGroup-root css-1qy80yj-MuiAvatarGroup-root">
  <div class="MuiAvatar-root MuiAvatar-circular MuiAvatarGroup-avatar css-1ltupah-MuiAvatar-root">
    <img alt="" src="https://example.com/example.png" class="MuiAvatar-img css-1pqm26d-MuiAvatar-img">
  </div>
</div>

Expected behavior 🤔

Using a list would better structure the list and its members for screen reader users:

<ul class="MuiAvatarGroup-root css-1qy80yj-MuiAvatarGroup-root">
  <li class="MuiAvatar-root MuiAvatar-circular MuiAvatarGroup-avatar css-1ltupah-MuiAvatar-root">
    <img alt="" src="https://example.com/example.png" class="MuiAvatar-img css-1pqm26d-MuiAvatar-img">
  </li>
</ul>

Steps to reproduce 🕹

import { Avatar, AvatarGroup, } from '@mui/material';

<AvatarGroup total={totalCount}>
  {membersSample.map((member, index) => (
    <Avatar key={index} user={member} />
  ))}
</AvatarGroup>

Context 🔦

This was flagged during an accessibility review of our application. Other MUI components, such as Typography let you override the HTML component (i.e. component="h2"), but AvatarGroup does not.

It would be good to (a) use <ul> and <li> as the defaults and (b) allow overriding of the component when needed.

Your environment 🌎

npx @mui/envinfo

  System:
    OS: macOS 12.5.1
  Binaries:
    Node: 18.7.0 - /opt/homebrew/bin/node
    Yarn: 1.22.19 - /opt/homebrew/bin/yarn
    npm: 8.15.0 - /opt/homebrew/bin/npm
  Browsers:
    Chrome: 104.0.5112.101
    Edge: Not Found
    Firefox: 101.0
    Safari: 15.6.1
  npmPackages:
    @emotion/react: ^11.9.3 => 11.9.3 
    @emotion/styled: ^11.9.3 => 11.9.3 
    @mui/base:  5.0.0-alpha.91 
    @mui/icons-material: ^5.8.4 => 5.8.4 
    @mui/lab: ^5.0.0-alpha.92 => 5.0.0-alpha.92 
    @mui/material: ^5.9.2 => 5.9.2 
    @mui/private-theming:  5.9.1 
    @mui/styled-engine:  5.8.7 
    @mui/system:  5.9.2 
    @mui/types:  7.1.5 
    @mui/utils:  5.9.1 
    @mui/x-data-grid: ^5.7.0 => 5.7.0 
    @types/react:  17.0.40 
    react: ^17.0.2 => 17.0.2 
    react-dom: ^17.0.2 => 17.0.2 
    typescript:  4.7.4 

[siriwatknp]

This issue is related to default accessibility (the markup) of the Avatar, AvatarGroup. Another issue is the workaround via component that is not working in AvatarGroup which should be a separate issue. Let's separate them:

The markup benchmark

• https://chakra-ui.com/docs/components/avatar/usage#avatargroup (uses role="group")
• https://mantine.dev/core/avatar/#avatargroup (same as Material UI)
• https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/fluentui#/controls/web/facepile (uses ul)

Let's wait for 👍 and consider adding it in v6.

For the workaround problem, I will create another issue.