Hyperlinks

Avoid Uninformative Link Phrases

Links are more useful to people using screen readers or keyboard navigation when they make sense out of context. Authors should avoid non-informative link phrases such as

  • click here
  • here
  • more
  • read more
  • link to [some link destination]
  • info

Your link should be direct and avoid extraneous words. For example, a link that says click here to access today’s weather can be shortened to today’s weather, or checkout the UMKC Online homepage could be shortened to UMKC Online.

URLS as Links

URLs are frequently not human-readable or screen-reader friendly. Many URLs contain combinations of numbers, letters, ampersands, dashes, underscores, and other characters that make sense to scripts and databases but make little or no sense to the average person. Screen readers will read each of these characters out loud to a user if they hyperlink is not listed properly.

For example, the readable link today’s Kansas City weather is more user-friendly than the link weblink, which consists of a 64-character link full of numbers, slashes, and text that is not very human-readable:

https://weather.com/weather/today/l/Kansas+City+MO+USMO0460:1:US