RE: Need advice on visually distinguishing characteristics of hyperlinks

Hi Nicholas,

Thanks for searching out these specific SCs.

I'd actually read them before my first email; I wasn't sure they were appropriate, because in this case colour is not the distinguishing feature of the hyperlinks: font weight or style is, instead. To my mind, they're only distinguished by a single trait (and not very well at that), so that might as well be the same thing as a hyperlink which is only distinguished by colour. But the SCs seem to address limitations in colour vision.

Andy Keyworth


From: Beranek, Nicholas <Nicholas.Beranek@capitalone.com>
Sent: March 13, 2018 1:28 PM
To: Andy Keyworth <akeyworth@tbase.com>; WAI IG <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Subject: RE: Need advice on visually distinguishing characteristics of hyperlinks

Hi Andy,

SC 1.4.1 Use of Color has a failure that addresses this: F73: Failure of Success Criterion 1.4.1 due to creating links that are not visually evident without color vision. You can find out more about it at the following link: https://www.w3.org/TR/2016/NOTE-WCAG20-TECHS-20161007/F73

G183: Using a contrast ratio of 3:1 with surrounding text and providing additional visual cues on focus for links or controls where color alone is used to identify them is a sufficient technique for SC 1.4.1 if you're unable to add additional indicators such as an underline. You can find more about that technique at the following link: https://www.w3.org/TR/2016/NOTE-WCAG20-TECHS-20161007/G183.html

I hope this helps!

Nick Beranek
Capital One

From: Andy Keyworth [mailto:akeyworth@tbase.com]
Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2018 11:57 AM
To: WAI IG <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org<mailto:w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>>
Subject: Need advice on visually distinguishing characteristics of hyperlinks

Hi,

Need advice on a situation that, frankly, I haven't run into before and am having trouble interpreting WCAG 2.0 success criteria.

I'm comparing two separate pages on a customer website: within the text content, there are hyperlinks which do not have a separate color from the surrounding text. All the text is black. The hyperlinks are not underlined: on one page, they are in bold text (and there is also bold text that is not hyperlinked on that page); on the second page, the hyperlinks are italicized, and resemble book titles.

The links change color and gain an underline on mouse-over; they gain an underline when the page is tabbed through.

Does the situation described above contradict any of the Success Criteria? I'm having trouble determining. They don't seem to directly violate either 1.3.3 Sensory Characteristics or 1.4.1 Use of Color; I'm not sure which other SC might count.

Thanks,

Andy Keyworth



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