This page provides detailed information related to the topic of links.
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Links
In online courses, it’s easy–and encouraged–to provide links within instructional materials so that students can immediately go to the web site, article, or video being discussed. However, when providing links, it’s important to make sure that the text of the link is descriptive and unique. Students who use screen readers can, on a properly formatted web page, jump from link to link in order to skim a page and get a sense of the content, navigation, and structure. However, if all the links on a page say “click here,” then very little information is provided. Pope Tech will flag this issue for you and make it easy to correct. Visit this Mission: Accessible page for a video demo of how to fix this issue in Pope Tech!
For similar reasons, providing the full URL of a website is not advisable. Screen readers will read out the entirety of a URL, and being forced to listen to “h t t p colon backslash backslash d l period s p s period northwestern period e d u” for every URL gets very tiresome very quickly. Instead, it is much better to direct people to the SPS Distance Learning website, for example, by embedding the link in the text.
In addition, if a link will open a new window or download a document, make sure to note that in the link. Canvas does this automatically for new web pages: you might notice that in the rich text editor, there will be a parenthetical next to the link that says (Link opens in an external window). That text doesn’t appear on the actual page, but it will be read out to screen readers or text-to-speech users. However, if a link leads to a document download, be sure to include that information so users know exactly what will happen when they click the link. This is as simple as putting (PDF) after the link text!