search

alphagov / govuk-frontend

GOV.UK Frontend contains the code you need to start building a user interface for government platforms and services.
https://frontend.design-system.service.gov.uk/
MIT License
1.17k stars 320 forks source link

Does link ink skipping cause some users to see single links as multiple links? #973

Closed timpaul closed 6 years ago

timpaul commented 6 years ago

Does link ink skipping cause some users to see single links as multiple links, and is this a problem?

This issue was raised previously here: https://github.com/alphagov/govuk_template/issues/339

markhurrell commented 6 years ago

have we seen any evidence of this causing problems? would hover/active/focus states reduce the chance of it happening?

traditional link underlines obstruct the descenders on letters, which is pretty much the most basic thing you shouldn't do for legibility. I'd want to see significant evidence of ink skipping actually causing users difficulty the justify not having it

timpaul commented 6 years ago

Not that I'm aware of. I agree, we'd need evidence of it being an issue on GOV.UK first. Here's an example of where it can cause genuine ambiguity:

image

However, we've tested this text with the New Transport font and it doesn't cause the same problem:

image

timpaul commented 6 years ago

Closing this now. If we find evidence that it's causing issues we can reopen.

Dean-A-Smith commented 3 years ago

Hi. I haven't seen a member of the public have an issue with this, but I have had colleagues outside of digital and design ask me why there are rogue full stops in pieces of content I've worked on. When I go to find out what they mean, I find what they've seen is an end section of a link where the underline has been interrupted by another symbol at the end, leaving just a dot of underline.

image

The context here is people in government checking content for accuracy, rather than scanning it or using it for a purpose, but thought it worth sharing.

lfdebrux commented 3 years ago

~We've now turned off ink skipping in version 3.13.0 of GOV.UK Frontend (see #2251), so this should no longer be an issue.~

Edit: actually ink skipping was only disabled for the hover state, ink skipping is still present for links in the normal state. Thanks for catching this @36degrees. Leaving this comment so I don't make the same mistake again 😅