Hyperlink Accessibility Issue

[JohnLelko]

Hello, 

When I create a hyperlink within announcements Canvas will default the color to a light blue. At the same time, Canvas' accessibility checker will flag the color as too light and suggests the color be darkened.

If a document has multiple hyperlinks, this can be a tedious task for someone to go through and correct.

Can Canvas please update the default color to a darker blue so that it is no longer flagged as an accessibility issue?

Thank you.

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[KristinL]

Hi @JohnLelko -

Do hyperlinks look differently in other locations within a Course? It could be that the default hyperlink color set in the Theme Editor is set (and could be adjusted). This could be addressed with someone on the Canvas Support team at your campus.

How do I create a theme for an account using the Theme Editor? 

If it is Announcements only, there may be something else affecting the appearance of those hyperlinks. Let the Community know what you find.

I look forward to collaborating with you!

[JohnLelko]

Hi, Kristin.

Thank you for responding.

The issue appears whenever a hyperlink is created within a page, an announcement, and when a link is created with a Module Block. I think that covers all, if not a majority, of where a link could appear in a course for students.

My guess is this is the general Canvas Template, and the default that Canvas has designated is a light blue link, which is an accessibility issue.

I think this is an issue that has to be addressed to the developers of Canvas. My eLearning department tried to address with Canvas, and their reply was, "No, there is no global setting, the only way to change the hyperlink from blue color is from the HTML code of canvas by developers."

Unfortunately, the message did not indicate that this would be communicated to the developers. Is there a way to get in direct contact with them to have the default color code changed? I may be mistaken, but this seems like this could be a quick fix on their end.

Thank you!

[chriscas]

Hi @JohnLelko ,

It seems to me like you got a somewhat bad/incorrect response from Canvas support about this.  In the Theme Editor, one of your institution's Canvas administrators can definitely adjust the link color under the global branding heading and that will apply to pretty much all links in your Canvas instance (we've done this at our institution, so I know it works).  You can also see  in a recent blog post, "More Accessible Default Theme Colors," by @dlyons that Instructure will be adjusting the default blue color to be more accessible too sometime soon.

Hope this helps!

-Chris

[dlyons]

@JohnLelko, The prior responses are correct; your admins definitely can brand Canvas using their preferred colors (see:How do I create a theme for an account using the Theme Editor?) and we have updated many default colors to improve accessibility across the Canvas Default Theme (see: More Accessible Default Theme Colors ) 

However, I'm pretty confident the actual issue you're seeing is related to a 3rd party tool your institution is using that is overriding the theme and setting those colors. Unfortunately we can't do anything about that on our end. Your admin will need to speak with the vendor about making their color choices more accessible.

I hope that helps!