RE: Breadcrumb text links - are they intended for 2.5.8 ?

I agree with Steve, breadcrumb links could be construed as being a
“sentence”, and there is no other text other than the links to constrain
their size.



Although breadcrumb links are not mentioned in the Understanding document
for SC2.5.8, they are very like the examples of rows of buttons in Figures
6 and 7 – long rectangular targets placed end to end (ignoring the chevrons
which aren’t in the link targets). The only difference is the button
borders aren’t present in the links. So if we look at the reasoning around
those two cases, we can apply the same logic to breadcrumb links.



In most websites, the breadcrumb links are in the standard font of the
page, usually 16px. So they are undersized according to what is said in the
Understanding doc. But on most websites, there isn’t usually any other
target immediately above or below them, so the 24px minimum for target size
OR spacing is met in those cases.



However, three things can happen:

1) The breadcrumb links might be directly below other links in the header
(quite often, the main menu). In that case we would have to ask if the
height of the breadcrumbs plus the spec between them and the menu (or other
targets) is less than 24px – that would be a fail.

2) When displayed on a narrow screen device such as a phone, do the links
wrap onto a second line? If they do, then they would look like Figure 7.
Then the two rows might be close enough that the 24px circles postulised
(yes, I know that’s not a real word, but I like it!) by the Understanding
document’s examples would intersect – again a fail. A touch screen phone
user with big fingers, or hand dexterity impairments, might in that case
have difficulty tapping the right links.

3) Some websites have breadcrumbs in a smaller font than 16px, or possibly
a smaller line height.



Actually, there is one other factor I haven’t mentioned yet, which would
usually see us ok in both the above situations of (1) and (2). The link
font size might only be 16px, but there is also the line height. That
extends the vertical spacing between two lines of text. Websites usually
specify a line height on text, in the CSS, and more often than not,
websites set it to 1.5. That makes the line height 24px for a 16px font;
i.e. the real height of the line is 24px. If that is true for your website,
the line height will be enough to satisfy 2.5.8.



In that situation there would only be a problem if the breadcrumb links are
in a small font size of less than 16px. With 12px font, for instance, and a
1.5 line height, the line height would be 18px. So the above situations (1)
and (2) will fail.



(Actually, the very wording of the SC and Understanding document is
ambiguous, and I have raised this before. When they say “The size of the
target for pointer inputs is at least 24 by 24 CSS pixels”, do they mean
both height and width must separately be at least 24px? Many engineers and
geographers faced with wording like that would assume the total *area*
should be less than 576 square pixels (24 times 24). Fortunately, if we
read the examples in the Understanding for 2.5.8 for long enough, the
intended meaning is clarified. But it was confusing wording. And the
wording of the Note, “Targets that allow for values to be selected
spatially based on position within the target are considered one target”
isn’t much better, further bolstering W3C’s reputation for abstruse
language!)



Given that breadcrumb links are so ubiquitous, I suggest it would be a good
idea to add their example to the Understanding document for SC2.5.8 along
with the possibilities in (1) to (3) above.