About This Page
This page has been adapted from the links core concept page on the WSU digital accessibility website by Daniel Rieck (daniel.rieck@wsu.edu). Daniel included all the content on the original links page and then expanded it with additional thoughts and opinions mainly to create more opportunities to demonstrate how to test a document for common accessibility issues that involve links. Accessibility issues involving links were then intentionally introduced to the page for the purpose of learning. This page was used as part of a presentation on web accessibility testing for GAAD 2024.
Compared to the reference page that has no accessibility issues that affect links, this page has several links that have been updated to use meaningless link text. This creates a problem for people who depend on assistive technology. Readers with sufficient visual acuity might be able to pick up on the intended link destination when they perceive the text surrounding the link. However, people who depend on assistive technology will experience additional and frustrating barriers to perceiving the destination from the surrounding context. The link test itself must signal the intended destination.
Different forms of meaningless link text were used, but the feature they all have in common is being too vague.
Importance of Links
Having clear, concise, and meaningful links can improve both the accessibility and usability of your digital content.
Links should provide a quick and clear understanding of the link destination as defined here. People scan the content for links whether they use assistive technology or not. Providing a link that describes its destination allows the link to be understood out of context from its surrounding text. This is especially helpful to those using assistive technology to scan through a list of links pulled from the page content or who are navigating through a page by the links.
Lengthy text links, links that span multiple lines, ambiguous links, and some URLs (web addresses) hinder people’s ability to assess the links quickly and easily in the content. Providing concise, meaningful, descriptive, and clearly identifiable links lets people quickly understand their purpose and decide whether to select them.
Link Text Examples
A few examples of meaningful, concise link text are given in a table on the original links core concept page, which is available there. Matching examples of ambiguous or lengthy link text are also given. Additionally, some examples of link text have been provided above (see the hero banner) and below (see the announcement cards).
Links to Recent WSU News Articles on Research Studies
Research could lead to more effective Q fever therapeutics
Discovery of mechanism plants use to change seed oil could impact industrial, food oils
Student turns textile scraps into wearable art
Linked Image Examples
Links on WSU Websites
Format of Links in the Web Design System
Links are displayed with crimson coloring and an underline on websites built in WSU WordPress. When a person interacts with a link, the underline disappears to signal the link is responsive to this behavior. If keyboard navigation is used to interact with the link, a focus indicator will also be shown consisting of a crimson border drawn around the link text. The crimson coloring has been carefully chosen to match the WSU brand’s core colors (learn more) and have a sufficient contrast against the typical white or light gray backgrounds present on most content containers.
Advice on Testing Links
Look at Link Text and Destination Together
When testing links on a page, it would be easy to check link destinations in sequence to look for broken links without simultaneously considering what the link text indicates the destination will be. It would also be easy to look at all the link text in sequence without checking link destinations at the same time. However, the best method for testing links is to manually test each link on a page in sequence by first considering the link’s text and then following it to ensure the destination matches.
Automated tools such as the W3C Link Checker can help with checking web pages for broken links. While these tools can be highly beneficial, by only looking at link destination, they still do not address the need to check the quality of link text.
Always Manually Check Link Destinations
When we as web content author produce a typical WSU web page, it is our duty to manually check all the links we include on the page. If we do not try our links, our readers will try them for us, and they will be affected by any mistakes we missed. BrowserStack reported statistics in 2023 that show how people will stop browsing flawed websites that give them a bad experience. And flawed links will certainly lead to a bad experience on a website. Kara Pernice from the Nielsen Norman Group explained in 2014 how a link is a promise and the impact of breaking such promises through unexpected or incorrect destinations that are out of harmony with what the link text indicated.