Link Text
Many screen reader users navigate websites by pulling up a list of only the links on a page.
What’s in it
What is it for?
Many screen reader users navigate websites by pulling up a list of only the links on a page. If your links just say 'Click here' or 'Read more', their list will just read out, 'Click here, Click here, Read more'. That doesn't help them find what they are looking for. Good link text makes sense all by itself, even if you hide the rest of the page.
Good link text doesn't need any special code. It's all about writing clear, helpful words, and everyone benefits from that, not just screen reader users.
How to support it
Write links that tell the user exactly where they are going, what they're doing, or what they are opening
- Be descriptive
- An example of non-descriptive link text - 'To see our new report, click here'
- An example of descriptive link text - 'Read our 2024 Report'
- Avoid raw uniform resource locators (URLs). You should never use a long web address as the link text (like
https://www...). Screen readers will read out the whole address, including slashes and symbols, which is very frustrating to listen to - Be clear and brief. You want to keep link text short - tell them the destination without writing a whole paragraph
You might think that the sentence right next to the link explains what it does. The catch is that users jumping from link to link do not hear the surrounding text. They only hear the words that you made clickable