WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

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Re: Hyperlinks displaying as blue text only

for

From: Jared Smith
Date: Jun 3, 2009 11:50AM

On Wed, Jun 3, 2009 at 10:46 AM, Mark Guisinger wrote:
>
> I've noticed on the WebAIM site that the links in the navigation show
> as blue text.  When you mouse over them they underline and the
> background changes colors to a yellow highlight.  My question is ...
> Does this meet Section 508 paragraph c and WCAG 1.0 checkpoint 2.1?

Both of the guidelines you refer to say that you shouldn't use color
alone to convey content. If you want to argue that it's a failure
because these links are blue and other text is black, then yeah, I
suppose it fails. But I don't really care. Find me a human that says
those boxes in the sidebar aren't clearly links and then I'll consider
a change.

For all practical purposes, what we do goes well beyond the guidelines
- the links are clearly distinguishable as links to both mouse and
keyboard users, even though they are not underlined by default. As
Christian suggested, it's much better to focus on practical
accessibility than ensuring compliance to limited (and arguably
limiting) guidelines.

And please note that our in-content links are underlined, which is the
easiest way to meet these guidelines. If you don't want to underline
links by default, simply make sure they are visually distinguishable
and that they have a clear hover and focus indication.

WCAG 2 provides some technical guidance on this in 1.4.1. It basically
says, "Color alone is not used to distinguish links from surrounding
text unless the luminance contrast between the link and the
surrounding text is at least 3:1 and an additional differentiation
(e.g., it becomes underlined) is provided when the link is hovered
over or receives focus."

Jared Smith
WebAIM