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Is using underlined text where it is NOT a link a failure of WCAG, and if so what SC applies? #4459

@mbgower

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@mbgower

I'm assuming folks would agree that some text in a body of text that appears with an underline underneath it is a problem, primarily because a user may think the underlined content is a text link.

I've previously cautioned anyone about doing this. But my question is: is it actually a WCAG failure?

I'm sharing a screenshot I found in a chat interaction, where some text is underlined to emphasize test phrases that could be used. The text is otherwise the same as other text (no colour difference).

Image

Even without added colour, they look like links.

Obviously in a scenario where someone used coloured underlined text to distinguish links from this black underlined text, that would be a failure of Use of Color. But here, there is no colour.

I'm tempted to try applying it against Consistent Identification, but while I think with a bit of creative interpretation I can make the normative language apply, I do not think that was the intended scope of the SC.

Components that have the same functionality within a set of web pages are identified consistently.

Thoughts?

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