Creating descriptive links

Descriptive links are important for both usability and accessibility.

Descriptive links for accessibility

• people who use screen readers will often navigate a website by tabbing from link to link, without reading the surrounding text
• this means that the screen reader reads out a list of links to them
• these individual links need to be meaningful, even when read without the surrounding text

Descriptive links for usability

• most people skim read pages looking for key information
• descriptive links help guide them to the right page

Writing descriptive links

• when you add a link to a page, imagine each link was on its own and had no text before or after
• ask yourself if you would know where that link would take you

Don't

• write  ‘click here’ or ‘email us’ 
• make your link text too long or too short - a single word is hard to click on, an entire sentence is too much detail

Do

• explain what the link is for
• include the action the user will take, ie download or visit

Linking to documents

• if you are linking to a document, state the file type and if possible the file size 
• this will indicate to the user that they are about to download something
• this is particularly important for people using phones where device storage or data plans may be limited
• don’t use the URL as the link text, this is confusing for people to read and for screen readers to read out

Linking to an email address

When referring to someone online their name should be linked to their email address. By clicking on it, a new email should be created that's sent to that person. 

Find out how to do this on our creating links page.

Test your links

• try it for yourself to see if your links make sense when read-aloud without the context of the page
• download and use a free screen reader such as NVDA (Windows)