1821788 - Link styles relying on use of color only

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Toolkit :: Themes, defect, P3)

Description

[Jules Simplicio [:jules]]

We're setting text-decoration: none on the .text-link classes in common-shared.css and browser-shared.css. common-shared.css is also applying this rule to html|a. activity-stream.css is doing the same thing under their link rules.

By setting this rule we're failing WCAG Success Criterion 1.4.1 Use of Color. The underline is applied to links so they can be easily identified, specially for folks who cannot perceive color differences. See Failure of Success Criterion 1.4.1. Ideally, we should remove that rule from our links.

Comment 1

[anayocrescent2]

please assign this to me

Comment 2

[anayocrescent2]

would the changes be done in all, common-shared.css files or a particular one

Comment 3

[Tim Giles [:tgiles]]

This is currently not an actionable bug and requires discussion first before making these changes

Comment 4

[Mark Striemer [:mstriemer]]

Asa says this would be nice to do over Slack, and mentioned it should at least respect the "Underline links" option in the Colours dialog, but I wasn't able to get that checkbox to do anything. We should probably file a ticket for that checkbox too.

Comment 5

[Hanna Jones [:hjones]]

Attachment: Styles related to the underline links pref

I looked into this a bit more - it seems the code related to the "Underline links" option in the colors dialog is still in place and working, but functions to provide more of a fallback/default for link styling, rather than forcing link underlining. You can see in the attached screenshot that the related styles can and do get overridden just about everywhere.

I'm going to hold off on filing a new bug for now, since a possible solution here would be to introduce some kind of "Always underline links" option that would function as more of an override than a fallback. It sounds like reworking the colors dialog is already on the accessibility team's radar.

Comment 6

[Jules Simplicio [:jules]]

Update: We contacted accessibility for support on this work and had a conversation with Asa. We are in agreement that underlines should be on the default link appearance. No historical reason why they were removed as it seems it was a cosmetic choice. We'll be talking to other engineers and planning the work around this since links appear throughout all of Firefox, and not just one stylesheet is responsible for this.

Comment 7

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The severity field for this bug is set to S3. However, the accessibility severity is higher, [access-s2].
:dao, could you consider increasing the severity?

For more information, please visit auto_nag documentation.

Comment 8

[Marc Seibert (:mseibert)]

Attachment: Bug 1821788 - Link styles relying on use of color only. r=dao

Comment 9

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/144be1f9cae5
Link styles relying on use of color only. r=dao

Comment 10

[Cristina Horotan [:chorotan]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/144be1f9cae5