Hand cursor does not change when hovering over unavailable menu items

Good morning,
I encountered a situation while I was using the mouse to first identify all interactive elements in a UI before checking them with the keyboard.

When hovering over unavailable menu items using the mouse, the hand cursor did not change and provide a sighted user with the visual cue that the item was unavailable. The text for unavailable items was only slightly lighter than the text for available menu items so the visual cue from text was weak..

When hovering over available items, the hand cursor was still there, plus there was color highlighting on the background of the available menu items that gave the user a visual cue that the item was available.

However, when hovering over an unavailable button on the same page, the cursor was a pointer instead of the hand icon, and when hovering over an available button the hand cursor was visible.

My question is - shouldn't the cursor be considered a visual cue that is required to have consistent behavior? I was thinking this was a failure of 1.4.1. Use of Color, and also a failure of 1.3.1. Info & Relationships.

It did not fail 4.1.2. Name, Role, Value because when tested with JAWS, availability of the menu items was announced correctly to JAWS.

Thank you in advance for any insights.

Regards,

Margaret Rasor
Accessibility SME & Tester

CNSI
2277 Research Blvd., Rockville, MD  20850
t: 240-243-2746  I www.cns-inc.com<http://www.cns-inc.com/>

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