Summary
You can improve both the usability and accessibility of links by making them concise, descriptive, and meaningful out of context.
Links are one of the most basic elements of any digital experience. Learning to write good link text can improve your emails, web pages, course websites, documents and digital content.
Impact
Well-written and well-placed links help both sighted people and those who use screen readers or other adaptive technology to consume content. Research has shown that sighted users typically scan pages for links to help them find what they're looking for. People using screen readers can do something similar by touching a button and hearing a list of all the links on a page. Well-placed links provide enough context to help all users make an informed decision about which links they want to follow.
What is a descriptive link?
A descriptive link is one that tells the user where the link will take them, for example: Explore our courses.
A non-descriptive link is using click here, read more or another vague label for your links.
Why it matters
Learning how to use links effectively can greatly improve everyone's experience when using the web, especially those using screen readers or other adaptive technology.
Many of us subconsciously seek out links for what we're looking for when we're on a webpage, while those with visual impairments or dyslexia, for example, can listen to all the links on a page via a screen reader at the touch of a button.
This is why it's important to hyperlink text that is meaningful and descriptive.
Hyperlink the message
"To see all of the study options UL has to offer, check out our Courses page" looks a lot cleaner and polished than:
"To see all of the study options UL has to offer, click on this link: https://www.ul.ie/courses"
Screen reader users will have to listen to the entire link being read out in a jumble of letters, punctuation and words. What is a screenreader?
Many links are not concise and contain many random letters and numbers - and nobody has the time to listen to all of that.
Stop using 'click here' - it's annoying
Avoid hyperlinking words like 'click here', 'learn more' or 'read more'.
Not only does it make it harder to determine where the link leads to at a glance, but screen readers will just read out those words without providing any context to where the link goes.
Listening to a screen reader read out 'click here' continuously for several links on a page makes for a very poor user experience.
Out of context to the rest of the page, hearing those words is meaningless and confusing. Try looking at the hyperlinked words without looking at the surrounding text - does it make sense?
Avoid hyperlinking entire sentences. Instead, pick up to five consecutive words that convey best where the link leads to.
How to hyperlink
To hyperlink text, highlight the desired text and press CTRL+K (or COMMAND+K on Mac) on your keyboard. From there, you can paste in your copied link using CTRL+V or Command+V.