A tag looking like a BUTTON tag. Fail?

Hi all,

Links styled to look like buttons o_O

Is there anywhere in WCAG where this practice is defined as acceptable/poor/fail?

In 'Resilient web design', https://resilientwebdesign.com/ Jeremy Keith talks about 'material honesty'.

The styling of A tags so they end up looking like BUTTONs must be one of the most common failures of this.

In the past I have considered 1.3.1:
"
Information, structure, and relationships conveyed through presentation can be programmatically determined or are available in text.
-WCAG 1.3.1 Info and Relationships
"
noting that what is visually a 'button' and so semantically should be a BUTTON tag, when programmatically determined (by AT) is found to be an A tag, so breaking WCAG 1.3.1.

Are there more precise WCAGs that may better support my conclusion?

Am I wrong to use 1.3.1 in this way in the first place?

I would be interested in your views and thank you in advance for any.

Cheers,

Alan

PS: Useful related article:
Adam Silver - 'But sometimes links look like buttons (and buttons look like links)'
- https://medium.com/simple-human/but-sometimes-links-look-like-buttons-and-buttons-look-like-links-9b371c57b3d2

Alan Bristow
Web Programmer
Policy and Public Affairs
Elections Canada
Desk 9-A-053
30 Victoria Street, Gatineau, QC K1A 0M6
alan.bristow@elections.ca
Tel.: 819-939-2232

Received on Tuesday, 28 May 2019 20:08:17 UTC