By Erica Foley
How many times have you seen "click here," "read more," or a full URL as a link on a webpage? While common, these links create unnecessary barriers for students. Users have to read the text around these links to find out the link’s destination and purpose. Especially for those using screen readers, reading the surrounding text adds friction. Descriptive links remove that friction and make course content easier to navigate for everyone.
Descriptive Links: Why and How
Impact
Descriptive links create efficient ways for all users to find the information they need. Both screen readers users and sighted users can move from link to link on a page to get to where they need.
Without a descriptive link, like in cases with a vague link or a full URL, the reader has to read around the page for context, increasing cognitive load and time required. Beyond that, when you post a full URL, screen readers read out the entire address, which is difficult to decipher when heard aloud.
Every descriptive link improves efficiency, user experience, and decreases distraction and frustration.
How To
Attach hyperlinks to text that describes the destination and purpose of the link.
❌ Instead of:
Learn more about AccessibleU: Digital Accessibility for Instructors here.
✅ Write:
Learn more about AccessibleU: Digital Accessibility for Instructors.
Five Minute Fix
When you have a few minutes:
- Pick a page or document in your existing course and change a link to a descriptive link.
- Identify a vague link (for example, “click here” or a pasted URL).
- Copy the link URL you will need.
- Select the descriptive text, and insert a hyperlink using the copied URL.
Wondering where to start?
- Start with a page or document your students must visit often. Great places to start are your Canvas Course Homepage or Syllabus.
- Use your Pope Tech Accessibility dashboard in Canvasto identify a page with a “Suspicious Link Text” alert.
Did you know?
Creating descriptive links takes no more time than inserting vague ones—and fixing existing links usually takes just seconds.
Learn more about accessibility
Learn more about applying Heading Structure and other digital accessibility practices at AccessibleU: Digital Accessibility for Instructors.
Learn more about using Pope Tech to check and improve accessibility in Canvas.