Accessibility: Links

[cjcenizal]

Problem

There are a few places where links rely on color alone to present that they are links. This includes headings on several pages (e.g., Visualize, Monitoring, Management) (Severity 3). The best way to address this is to underline links by default. Otherwise, we must do the following two things:

• When color is used as the only way to differentiate links, WCAG 2.0 requires a 3:1 contrast ratio between link text and body text, as well as a 4.5:1 contrast ratio with the background. Text does not meet this requirement on the "Visualize" page is (2.5:1), but they do on "Monitoring" and
  "Management".
• WCAG 2.0 also requires that links that are not underlined by default present "a non-color designator" (this is typically the introduction of the underline) on both mouse hover and keyboard focus. This allows users who have overridden page colors to differentiate links.

Audit

Search for <a and make sure all link use the kuiLink class from the UI Framework. Then we should update the UI Framework to have accessible default, hover, and focus states.

[snide]

I'm closing this one out. After doing a lot of research on this issue I think it's a nearly impossible target. Other large accessibility initiatives seem to have come to the same paths we did.

Getting to the contrast ratio needed against the text without having underlines has an extremely small range. Almost all large websites, and even accessibility information sites from large companies seem to bend the rules on this one.

That leaves us with underlining all our links. Kibana isn't a content site, its links tend to be in large numbers and presented as navigation. I think putting underlines on all these links would negatively impact the overall design in a way I'm not comfortable with.

If anyone has questions on this one, feel free to bring them up or contact me. I spent a good deal of time doing research here coming to this decision.