WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: FW: non-underlined link - will bolding meet contrast requirement?

for

From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: Jun 23, 2016 12:51AM

Ok, a few points of clarification (as always, feel free to correct me
if I am mistaken anywhere):
There are two different WCAG SC at play here:
1.4.1 talks about being able to distinguish links from surrounding
text (only when links are embedded in a block of text). Bolding the
link text here suffices to distinguish the link from the surrounding
text, so the 3 to 1 color contrast of link text vs. surrounding text
no longer applies. As pointed out this technically passes, though it
is not optimal.

1.4.3 talks about contrast ratio of text to background. Bolding the
link text reduces the 4.5:1 requirement to 3:1, but it still has to be
met.

Visual formatting does not affect screen readers when done via CSS.
If html text-level semantic elements such as <I>, <b>, <em> and
<strong> elements are used to do this, it could technically affect
screen readers. But in reality most screen readers are not affected as
they do nothing with these elements, something that will hopefully
change. See test page for some of these at:
http://whoseline.a11yideas.com/01_semanticTextElements.html




On 6/22/16, Jonathan Avila < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>> You're statement is correct - making something bold does increase it's
>> relative visible contrast - but it does not change the contrast ratio as
>> determined by WCAG.
>
> Bold text that is 14point through 17 point is the exception to this
> statement. That is -- bold text that is 14pt or larger has a lesser
> contrast ratio than non-bold text less than 18 pt according to WCAG 2. It
> doesn't guarantee it can be read by people with low vision or color
> deficiencies though.
>
> Jonathan
>
> Jonathan Avila
> Chief Accessibility Officer
> SSB BART Group
> <EMAIL REMOVED>
> 703.637.8957 (Office)
>
> Visit us online: Website | Twitter | Facebook | Linkedin | Blog
> Check out our Digital Accessibility Webinars!
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf
> Of Jared Smith
> Sent: Wednesday, June 22, 2016 4:32 PM
> To: WebAIM Discussion List
> Subject: Re: [WebAIM] FW: non-underlined link - will bolding meet contrast
> requirement?
>
> Thad -
>
> You're statement is correct - making something bold does increase it's
> relative visible contrast - but it does not change the contrast ratio as
> determined by WCAG.
>
> Jared
>
>
> On Wed, Jun 22, 2016 at 2:02 PM, Thad C < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> wrote:
>> I definitely defer to Jared on this. Sorry if my statement indicating
>> that making a font bold may, in some cases, increase contrast was
>> missleading .... always learning.
>>
>> Thaddeus
>> On Jun 22, 2016 12:57 PM, "Jared Smith" < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>>
>>> If the links are made bold, then they are no longer relying solely on
>>> color to differentiate them from non-link text. Now bold is generally
>>> less discernible than underline, and as Caitlin noted, bold can also
>>> be used for emphasized text. While not optimal, I believe that bold
>>> text (especially if used with sufficient contrast differences) would
>>> be sufficient to meet the WCAG requirement for not relying on color
>>> alone.
>>>
>>> Bold text does not change the contrast ratio. WCAG does have a lower
>>> foreground-to-background ratio threshold for text that is 14 point
>>> and bold or larger, but this would not be applicable to the contrast
>>> requirement (3:1 ratio) for links vs. surrounding text for
>>> non-underlined links.
>>>
>>> Jared
>>> >>> >>> archives at http://webaim.org/discussion/archives
>>> >>>
>> >> >> archives at http://webaim.org/discussion/archives
>> > > > http://webaim.org/discussion/archives
> > > > > >


--
Work hard. Have fun. Make history.