Underline, strikethrough, superscript, and subscript

Certain font styling elements are not conveyed to screen readers and may confuse users. Use these features carefully.

Avoid Underline

In digital documents, underline indicates a hyperlink. Using underline for emphasis—a typewriter-era workaround for bold or italic—creates confusion in modern contexts.

Underlining non-link text misleads users, particularly those with cognitive disabilities who expect underlined words to be clickable. Did you attempt to click "underlined" in the previous sentence?

Use Strikethrough, Superscript, and Subscript with Care

Strikethrough, ^superscript, and _subscript carry no semantic meaning and are not conveyed to screen readers. While some web techniques can communicate this formatting, Office documents offer no such capability—styled text is read as normal text, potentially causing confusion.

Consider this altered version of a sale-priced item from the Stanford Store website:

The difference between sale and regular prices is shown using color and strikethrough—a common implementation across web stores.

However, the actual website is more accessible because it includes supplementary text labels for each price.

Without the "Reduced" and "Regular" labels, screen reader users would only hear "$20.99", then "$27.99" without knowing which price applies. Since strikethrough text cannot be reliably conveyed to screen readers in most documents, adding descriptive labels is an effective solution.

On the web, the first example can also be made accessible for screen reader users by adding text before each price and positioning it off-screen so it's not visible. For instance, you could identify the two prices as follows:

<p><span class="sr-only">Original Price </span><strike>$90.00</strike></p>
<p><span class="sr-only">Sale Price </span>$30.97</p>

The same applies for superscript and subscript. For example, $9⁹⁹ will be read as "$999" rather than "$9.99". Consider adding the decimal as off-screen text, like this:

<p>$9<span class="sr-only">.</span><sup>99</sup></p>

This doesn't mean strikethrough, superscript, and subscript should be completely avoided—simply understand that information conveyed through these formatting methods alone will not be accessible to assistive technology users.

INS and DEL

For legal documents with deleted or inserted passages, use the <del> and <ins> elements respectively. While not conveyed by default, these elements carry semantic meaning that users can access if needed.