1551619 - Accessibility: Links on MDN are identified by color only

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(developer.mozilla.org Graveyard :: Design, defect, P2)

Description

[Janet Swisher]

What did you do?

Look at any link on MDN.

What happened?

Links on MDN use color only to differentiate them from other text.

What should have happened?

WCAG guideline 1.4.1: Don’t use presentation that relies solely on colour

See https://www.wuhcag.com/use-of-colour/ for more explanation.

We should underline them or put a background or something.

Is there anything else we should know?

Cross-filed from https://github.com/mdn/sprints/issues/1528

Comment 1

[Schalk Neethling [:espressive]]

I will take this and suggest P2, and 2 points.

Comment 2

[Eric Shepherd [:sheppy]]

We intentionally removed the underlines a long while back because they were distracting for some people. We should make sure we avoid a change that makes the text less readable.

Comment 3

[Janet Swisher]

We should avoid a change that makes the text inaccessible for some people. If underlines are "distracting", then we should find a solution that is both accessible and non-distracting (cognitive accessibility is important too). It's embarrassing to have content about accessibility that violates accessibility guidelines.

Comment 4

[Janet Swisher]

For example, you could ensure that there is sufficient contrast between (1) the regular text color, (2) the link color, and (3) the background color, so that color-blind users can still distinguish them: https://chipcullen.com/accessible-links-without-underlines/

I would be interested in seeing any studies about the distractingness of underlines.

Comment 5

[BMO Automation]

MDN Web Docs' bug reporting has now moved to GitHub. From now on, please file content bugs at https://github.com/mdn/sprints/issues/ and platform bugs at https://github.com/mdn/kuma/issues/.