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

for

From: Philip Kiff
Date: Feb 13, 2025 12:13PM

On 2025-02-13 1:40 p.m., Philip Kiff via WebAIM-Forum wrote:
> 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.

Mmmm... I guess I should add that there are some cases when I think it
is actually acceptable NOT to underline links in a PDF. In a Table of
Contents, for example, where every item in the Table of Contents is a
link to a corresponding heading, then I don't think you need to
underline every entry. In fact, underlining every entry might make it
harder for some folks to read - you would get a page of all underlined
text.

Admittedly, that means that some users won't actually know that the
items in the Table of Contents are links unless they try to click on
one. Though I think that every Table of Contents *should* be a set of
links, so I wouldn't publish a PDF that didn't link each heading. But
that still leaves folks opening up PDFs and randomly trying to click on
headings in the Table of Contents without knowing in advance whether
clicking on it will work. Sometimes it's better to use the bookmarks
panel instead - which should normally duplicate the links in the Table
of Contents.

While WCAG doesn't really apply cleanly to PDFs, I think that a Table of
Contents can roughly fall under the same Success Criteria as those
covering navigation or menu links on a web page, which aren't normally
required to be underlined provided that it is clear that they are part
of a navigation menu.

Phil.