RE: Underline vs. bottom border

It’s possible that if people overwrite CSS using an extension or stylesheet for their visual needs that they may need to consider the impact of this.   However, it seems like this is something that could be addressed by the person when creating their overriding CSS.

Jonathan

From: John Foliot <john.foliot@deque.com>
Sent: Monday, January 4, 2021 11:04 AM
To: Pearson, Amy <apearson@apa.org>
Cc: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Subject: Re: Underline vs. bottom border

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Hi Amy,

Personal opinions here, but should you go that route I will suggest the following:

  1.  ensure the 'border-width' (stroke-weight) is at least 2 or 3 px wide,
  2.  ensure that the color contrast of that bottom-border meets the 3:1 color-contrast requirements
Outside of that, this is not an uncommon technique AFAIK.

JF

On Mon, Jan 4, 2021 at 10:37 AM Pearson, Amy <apearson@apa.org<mailto:apearson@apa.org>> wrote:
Happy New Year, everyone.

I was hoping you could provide some insight regarding the treatment/coding of underlined links…

We currently use text-decoration: underline to underline links in body text. However, we are considering changing this to use a border-bottom treatment instead (plus a little padding so the line is slightly lower than the standard underline).

Are there any negative ramifications to using the padding-bottom with assistive technologies? I have seen some demos where users can adjust how different elements appear on the page and want to make sure we’re not going to do anything that would override or interfere with that.

Thank you for your expertise on this! -amy

__________________________________________________________
Amy Pearson | Manager, UX Optimization and Compliance
Digital Strategy & Services, Communications
American Psychological Association
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apearson@apa.org<mailto:apearson@apa.org>

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