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Re: Minimal style needed to make links accessible?

for

From: Waltenberger, Lon (LNI)
Date: Aug 24, 2010 4:15PM

Even though I respect the talents of graphic designers, I'm not one. Any
site I designed would be visually dull to most but it'd be highly
accessible and, therefore, usable. I'd have to hire a graphic designer
for the visual side.

I look at Web design more from a utilitarian, accessible, and usable
perspective. I'm not saying graphic designers don't understand
usability; they merely have different innate preferences.

I prefer following the KISS Principle in everything I do:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle &
http://searchcio-midmarket.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid183_gci52169
4,00.html. I've learned over 6 decades that it works best.

And regarding form over function, style over accessibility, I refer to
Nielsen's Alertbox at http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20040510.html.

I'm happy that cars, planes, trains, and scuba gear aren't designed like
desktops, laptops, some ghastly cell phones, and websites.

...Lon


On 25/08/10 08:41, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
> I could write an essay on why underlining links is a stylistically
very bad
> idea. For one thing, it breaks the patterns of words, especially if
many
> letters have descenders (as in "g") or parts that more or less reside
on the
> baseline (as in "u").
>

Can't this be mitigated by using border-bottom for a faux underline
instead of text-decoration: underline? The bottom border can act as an
underline but does not need to bisect a letter's descender nor, if a
sufficient line-height is applied, cut in to the text on the next line.
One account of this approach is described here:
http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/32-styling-lists-and-links/#fauxunder
lines

Jason Kiss
accessibleculture.org