RE: Need advice on visually distinguishing characteristics of hyperlinks

Agreed on all counts. I've decided on a compromise approach: I'm making this a more general comment on usability best practices (as Patrick suggested), but referencing 1.4.1 as the most relevant SC.

Thanks all,

Andy Keyworth

-----Original Message-----
From: Pyatt, Elizabeth J <ejp10@psu.edu> 
Sent: March 13, 2018 4:29 PM
To: Andy Keyworth <akeyworth@tbase.com>
Cc: w3c-wai-ig <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Subject: Re: Need advice on visually distinguishing characteristics of hyperlinks

This is an interesting case and I couldn’t find anything specific other than the general concept that navigation links should be perceivable. 

"Principle 1: Perceivable - Information and user interface components must be presentable to users in ways they can perceive.”
https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/#perceivable


FWIW - A user on a screen reader would probably not have an issue because a link (i.e. an A tag) is a link, regardless of visual formatting.

However, sighted users would have a difficult time understanding these items as links instead of formatted text. Usability experts would be having a fit of course because most users with vision would not have the usual visual cues (usually a change in color + underlining) to know that the text was a link.

Hope this is of some use.
Elizabeth

> On Mar 13, 2018, at 11:56 AM, Andy Keyworth <akeyworth@tbase.com> wrote:
> 
> 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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Elizabeth J. Pyatt, Ph.D.
Accessibility IT Consultant
Teaching and Learning with Technology
Penn State University
ejp10@psu.edu, (814) 865-0805 or (814) 865-2030 (Main Office)

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Received on Tuesday, 13 March 2018 20:34:51 UTC