Link treatment
- Forbidden
- Dropping the underline but keeping the colour, in body text. That is the one combination that fails colour-blind users while looking fine to everyone else.
- Instead
- Keep the underline. Colour is the part you may drop — an underlined link without colour still reads as a link to everyone; a coloured link without an underline reads as a link only to people who can see the colour.
What this rule looks like
Why this rule
The default for a link inside running text is colour and underline. Colour-blind users cannot separate a coloured link from surrounding prose; the underline is what makes it a link for them.
Two legitimate departures, and they are not the same:
| Case | Treatment | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Body text link | Colour + underline | Default. Never drop both. |
| Already-obviously-interactive component — nav item, tab, card, button-styled link | Neither required | Position, container and grouping already signal it. Adding link styling clutters without informing. |
| Secondary link that colour + underline would over-weight | Underline, no colour | Keeps the affordance while restoring hierarchy — a supporting link should not compete with the primary action beside it. |
- Kind
- Rule
- Section
- Things to avoid
- Group
- Colour and contrast
- Bucket
- judgment
- Severity
- note
- Since
- v0.1.0