Hyperlinks

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Welcome to Accessibility in 5, a series from UFIT where we explore a quick tip on making your content more accessible in 5 minutes or less. I'm Stephanie (Lower third reads Stephanie Richardson) and today's topic is hyperlinks. 

Links are everywhere. You find them in emails, digital newsletters, all over websites, and even in your courses. They're a versatile and convenient tool that allows us to quickly disseminate information to our audiences. But did you know that there's an accessible and inaccessible way to provide links? When including URL's and links in our content, we want to attach these URL's to text, AKA, we want to create a hyperlink. Hyperlinks are useful in that they can make any content look a little bit neater, but even more importantly, it can make your content more accessible.

By including meaningful link texts, we can provide our students with a seamless transition between normal content text and our links. It allows our students that use a screen reader to know exactly where the link they're clicking on will go. No one wants a surprise when they click on a link. They have clear expectations of where they're going and what information they should find. For students with low vision or that are blind, they can't just hover over a link to see where it goes. They rely on what the screen reader is telling them is on the screen, which in turn means that they're relying on us to provide the best information that we can.

As such, we need to be concise and yet descriptive about where the link is going so that they don't end up hearing this:[screen reader playing] "https//upload.infrastructure.com/courses/386090/pages/oneassinmentsmoduleitemID=775185#authentic," which is what a URL sounds like on a screen reader when it's not hyperlinked with meaningful text. Or this: [screen reader playing] "more information," which is what it sounds like when we give generic terms for our hyperlinks. I know I certainly couldn't have told you where that link was going based on the information provided.

To make hyperlinks as accessible as possible, we want to hyperlink our URL to the text that tells the audience (1) where the URL is going, and (2) what information should be on this page. For example, if I wanted to provide more information about how to write hyperlinks, I would include a hyperlink to WebAIM's guide to links and hypertext. To include this link, I wrote where it's going (Web AIM's website) and what the page is about (links and hypertext). So when a screen reader reads this link, it'll sound like: [screen reader playing] "WebAIM's guide to links and hypertext."

Thanks for watching Accessibility in 5. You can find this video, as well as previous ones archived, on the citt.ufl.edu/resources page. Tune in next month to learn about tips to make PowerPoint files accessible.

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