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Re: Can you remove link underlines and focus indicators in PDF documents?

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From: Philip Kiff
Date: Feb 13, 2025 11:40AM

Hi Birkir,

On 2025-02-13 12:00 p.m., Birkir R. Gunnarsson via WebAIM-Forum wrote:
> One requirement is to make sure all interactive elements have a focus
> indicator. You can easily remove that in a browser but I don't know if it
> needs to be tested in a PDF document (can the document authors somehow
> remove the focus outline?)

No, for most "static" PDFs, I don't think you need to test for this. The
"focus" indicator is not normally something that is written into the
PDF, but rather something that is applied by whatever software you use
to read the PDF. Some PDF readers allow users to customize how they want
links or input fields to appear during interactions.

If you are creating "dynamic" fillable PDFs that use XFA (XML Forms
Architecture), then I think you would need to test all the interactions,
including focus indicators. That format gives you a lot of control over
the user interface. But creating accessible "dynamic" XML forms is
highly specialized work, and creating accessible forms is always a
challenge, and not something that can be fixed or tested with basic checks.

On 2025-02-13 12:00 p.m., Birkir R. Gunnarsson via WebAIM-Forum wrote:

> The other check is to make sure that links in a block of text are
> underlined. Again, can the author of a PDF document do things like removing
> default underlines from links or bookmarks?

Definitely you should check that links are underlined or otherwise
indicated clearly. Most PDF software allows creators to remove such
marks - there is an actual setting called "invisible" that you can apply
to a link annotation in a PDF. When applied, the only way that some
users can discover the links is when they happen to hover their mouse
above the relevant piece of text. I would follow current WCAG best
practices when interpreting whether links require underlines in a PDF or
if some other visually distinct indicator is acceptable. Underlining and
colouring in blue is the most widely recognized method for standard PDF
text documents.

Phil.

Philip Kiff
D4K Communications