I’ve always seen this problem as more “designer vanity” than designers actually thinking and designing for the needs of different people who will be reading a page/article/document. The default link state is specified as underlined and blue (contrasting from black text) for a reason – accessibility. If you remove them you also remove some accessibility.

What’s more important, designer vanity or accessibility? Your answer will demonstrate your commitment to an accessible web

Personally, I usually don’t use underlining for links. I just don’t like the way they look, for some reason. But I make sure it’s fairly obvious what’s a link and what’s not with my layouts. I always make sure I underline links in the content areas, and I underline links in nav areas that also need non-linked text (such as categories).

For those of us with color-deficient vision, it’s a slap in the face to expect us to decipher every website’s own unique link color scheme (assuming we can even discern the colors involved), hovering over everything to see when the mouse pointer changes and tells us what’s a link and what isn’t. (Not to mention internet devices like the iPhone, which don’t have any concept of “hover” and therefore render the whole no-underline hyperlink fad worse than useless.)

If all the major browsers provided a simple option setting to force hyperlinks to always remain underlined, then I suppose site designers could go ahead and do whatever silly faffing about they please. Unfortunately, of the browsers I’ve used, only iCab has provided a simple checkbox option for this. In all the major browsers (Firefox, Safari, Opera, IE), I’m expected to know how to write custom CSS and add it to my browser in a way that forces the links to remain underlined at all times (and even then, it still doesn’t work 100% of the time). This poses significant usability problems for your average person with color-deficient vision and no CSS coding skills.

Clearly, color-deficient vision is still one of those disabilities it’s okay to ignore when it comes to user interface design, as evidenced by fact that only two people in the comments section even mentioned colorblindness or color-deficient vision as a factor in deciding whether or not to use underlines for hyperlinks. Color-deficient vision simply isn’t on the radar of enough people making website design decisions. (Even the site I’ve linked to above, talking about “Ensuring Accessibility for People With Color-Deficient Vision”, doesn’t bother to properly underline their hyperlinks, despite the fact that it’s mentioned in the article at that very link!)

The article-writer here seems to think that all underlines should be removed due to his issues with dyslexia (comment #7). While I can see where he’s coming from with this, I can’t see an underline being the sole deciding factor in issues with dyslexia, and from the other comments this clearly isn’t a deciding factor for anybody else. Forcing all links to be underlined has never “made reading more difficult” for me in any way, contrary to the blanket statements made by others in the comments.

It’s distressing, but sadly not surprising, that those of us with color-deficient vision are mostly ignored when this issue comes up. Thanks to Nigel (#23) for at least mentioning it, and Frank Topel (#30) for finally making it the central point of consideration. I invite everyone else to carefully reconsider their opinions in light of the accessibility issues outlined here.

That means, there’s no reason to underline links.

One reason was familiarity. People are accustomed to blue underlined links and feel at home when presented with them. Hmm… I’m not entirely convinced.

However, another reason was for the benefit of people with varying degrees of colour-blindness. That to me makes more of a compelling case for using them. So my dilemma – to design a pretty site for my benefit, or a more usable site for as many visitors as possible.

I’ve considered using bold text, as mentioned above, but I think a lot of bold text can make a page look cluttered too. And does bold instantly say; “Click me”. If a page is to look cluttered anyway then maybe it’s as well to use conventional clutteredness.

To aid visitors who initially scan web pages, I’ve included plenty of sub-headings and newspaper style inter-paragraph bold headings. I think adding bold links as well makes for a very confusing page.

On a different though kind of related topic, that same article also stated that visited links should always be differentiated by a colour change. Personally, the only time I find that useful is with a list of results on Google. When I return I can instantly tell which links I’ve already followed against the million or so still to be investigated! Other than that, adding another colour just adds to the cluttered appearance of a web page. But again, should I be designing for my own aesthetic pleasure or for user-friendliness?

By the way, the above points are all in relation to in-content links. I think it’s fairly obvious that text in navigation, site map, etc is clickable without the need for any additional clues.

If we do take out the underline, there must be some other visual cue to identify it as a link so that the reader is not confused as to what is a link and what is body text.

Perhaps changing the font color and weight will do this just fine. I like steve Krug’s way of putting it-make it, “Obviously clickable.”

So mostly I can see where the links are easily enough without the visual distraction of seeing underlines, which really breaks into my reading attention (and are ugly besides).

If I think there ought to be a link and don’t see one, then I can mouse around the suspect area. That doesn’t usually distract me, probably because I choose when to do it.

What I DON’T want is for the page to override my no-underline setting. It can change the visited and unvisited colors, as long as they aren’t the same as plain text.

So I say – don’t underline links, because my browser settings will take care of it for me the way I want. You can’t get it right for enough people no matter which way you go, so just leave them alone.

In pages I design, I usually make the links a different color, and don’t specify underlining one way or the other. I often have the links’ background color change when they are moused over. IMHO, this is the best way to handle the subject.

Anyway, I recently addressed the exact opposite of this question: Is it okay to use underlines as a false target when in fact everything surrounding it is a link?

Finally, it’s interesting to see Jared reference the use of an eyetracker here, given his general hostility towards them. But it makes sense: he’s not recommending that you use it on your own site — he’s simply demonstrating that they can produce useful insights into user behavior in general.

One good reason not to use underlines is they make the text more difficult to read. In many renderings, they cut off the descenders on the fonts, making it harder for the brain to discern the shape of the words (or for people suffering from dyslexia like myself, the letters).

Underlines were a poor choice by the astro-physicists that decided on this convention, but we’ve learned to live with it.

If you’re looking for reasons not to use underlines, they are pretty easy to come by.

If you can’t come up with a good reason not to underline them, then don’t do it. How simple is that? Oh, and making your site look prettier is not a good enough reason.