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Re: Using color to distinguish a visual element

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From: Cliff Tyllick
Date: Dec 9, 2008 2:50PM

More anecdotal evidence for consistency: At a nonprofit where I volunteer, I'm having to expand my professional abilities to include CSS mastery. The main driver? Not the poor styling of headings, not the crummy font used as body text, but the styling of links. On the main pages, they look just like text. (On second-tier pages, oddly enough, they look like *underlined* text.)

Among the hundreds of folks who have used this Web site, I have yet to encounter one who knows that there are links in the body of each page.

Keep it simple. Be consistent.

Cliff Tyllick
Web development coordinator
Agency Communications Division
Texas Commission on Environmental Quality
512-239-4516
<EMAIL REMOVED>

>>> "Mike Osborne - AccEase" < <EMAIL REMOVED> > 12/9/2008 3:27 PM >>>
Some time ago I observed a tester with cognitive impairment trying to
navigate a site. She had been taught that a link could be recognised as
having blue text with underline. It was heartbreaking to watch as this
tester tried to establish a link and navigate the site - given that links
were represented differently in the top menu, main menu, left hand
navigation, right hand news/highlight items and of course the footer - let
alone the body text.

Base principle of usability is consistency - blue underline is consistent.

I find it interesting to note that the major money-making sites on the Net -
e.g. Amazon, Google stick to blue underline.

Unfortunately usability.gov does not.

Regards
Mike Osborne

AccEase Ltd
p. 04 934 2821
m. 021 675 010
e. <EMAIL REMOVED>
w. www.AccEase.com