If the text is a clear directive and the cursor changes to a hand on mouseover, does that meet accessibility standards? Or does there have to be an actual visual change to the link itself?
Best Answer
It satisfies WCAG 2.1. It may not satisfy your own personal or organizational standards for accessibility.
The answer is clearly no.
IF the appearance of the link doesn't change,
- how can keyboard only users see that it is on focus ?
- more generally, how is it possible to see that the link is on focus when not using the mouse or on device that don't have a mouse (e.g. touch screen) ?
Clearly, if there is no obvious way to know where the focus is, that's an huge accessibility problem.
It can even be difficult for partially sighted users, who might not well see the cursor changing in shape.
Changing the appearance of the element on hover make also users more confident on what they are exactly going to click on and what is going to happen when they click, and this is true for all users, not only partially sighted.
So, this is a must for accessibility, and certainly a good practice even for general UX.