Links enhance any digital experience, and thousands are used across the UL website.
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.