Re: Differentiating links from normal text

Hi Poornima,
There definitely needs to be some TEXTUAL differentiation if the link text is within a text part of the page, you must not rely simply on a change of colour.  – However if the link is part on a clearly defined navigation menu it does not need textual identification because the context already makes it clear that it is a link.  

So for your problem you need to decide if the list of links is obvious from its context.  If your page says something like “Here is a list of links to useful info” and is immediately followed by a numbered or bulleted list then you could probably get away without the need to underline the text in each list item.  Your designer is probably correct in saying that a block of underlined list items looks too cumbersome.  To be safe though I would suggest that you underline the call to action but leave the rest of the link text not underlined.

Another option is to include an HTML arrow at the end of the link (try » or » )

Clear  identification of link text is essential for WCAG compliance.

Regards

Richard

www.website-accessibility.com

From: Subramanian, Poornima (PCL) 
Sent: Friday, January 26, 2018 10:10 PM
To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org 
Subject: Differentiating links from normal text

Hi, I would appreciate any design suggestion regarding “differentiating links from normal text” for the below scenario - 

 

I was aware the WCAG recommendations on the links (i) no use of color alone for links (ii) highlight links in different formatting while in blocks of text

 

In one of our test pages, there is a list of items with each item shows the title, date, a call-to-action button (designed together as a link). Here, the page contain mostly links in the form of list items. 

 

And, the designers think underlining the links will make it look cumbersome visually.

 

Couple of questions – 

 

1.       Any design suggestions on how the links can be differentiated in this example to make it compliant? (e.g. bold, underline the title)

2.      Is underlining or differentiating the links must or nice-to-have for WCAG compliance?

 

Best,

Poornima

 

Accessibility Tester & Consultant

 

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