Footnote links and their backlinks are too small

[selfthinker]

Footnotes within the Govspeak component currently don't fail 2.5.8 Target Size (Minimum). But that is only because there is an exception for interactive elements within inline text.

Note: 2.5.8 is part of the new draft WCAG 2.2 criteria. The latest standard is WCAG 2.1. WCAG 2.2 isn't published yet, so this is potentially subject to change.

But the small size of footnotes is still an accessibility issue, they are very difficult to click on with a mouse or finger on a touch device, especially for people with motor impairments. That’s worse when footnotes or backlinks are close to another link or footnote (which can also look different in other viewports).

When testing the smallest footnote link was only 5.62 x 18.5px and the backlink was 19 x 23.5px. There is a worse example of footnotes under Specialist content.

Screenshots of footnotes and backlinks with their dimensions:

This was fixed in some areas on www.gov.uk already (e.g. partly in this Govspeak PR) by changing:

• ‘1’ to ‘[footnote 1]’ (although a shorter '[note 1]' might also work)
• ‘↩’ to ‘Go to where this is referenced’ (although that was later changed to be in an aria-label and not visible text, there would need to be a bit more text or spacing to make the link wider)

That also shows that there is an issue of footnotes currently being inconsistent across www.gov.uk.

[nnagewad]

@matthillco + @andysellick will this be resolved after the font-scale update has gone live?

[andysellick]

Unfortunately probably not.

[nnagewad]

@selfthinker This is an interesting. Would you happen to have any live examples of this issue on-hand?