Insights and best practices for digital media professionals, by Manning Krull.

Disclaimer: The views expressed on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employers. :)   – Manning Krull

Meaningful link text, aka link purpose

Of all the accessibility/ADA topics I talk about every day, I find that this is the one that is hardest for my colleagues to wrap their brains around!

The concept sounds simple: For ADA compliance, the text of each link in any digital piece must give context about where it goes. I think this sounds clear to a lot of people, but then what they're interpreting this to mean is actually wrong. I'll explain (and give you some examples!) ...

Here's some important background that you might not be aware of: Many people with visual impairments use screen reader software, which reads a website (or email, etc) out loud to them. The user listens to the text of the piece as it's being read by the screen reader. As you can imagine, it can take a lot of time for the software to read through a whole webpage or email. A typical way for screen reader users to move through a digital piece more quickly is to tab through the document, jumping from link to link, and listening to the linked text only. Based on this, they can make a decision about which link they want to follow. In order for this to work, for each link, the linked text must give context about where it's going. Hence the alternate term for this concept, link purpose; the linked text needs to tell us something about the purpose of the link.

For typically-sighted users, it may be hard to understand how meaningful text must be written, and why it's important — this includes some of my colleagues who struggle with the concept. So, for starters, check this out; here are some examples of (fake) links that use good meaningful link text / link purpose:

All of those blue, underlined bits above contain words about where the links go. Even just one word ("Efficacy") can do the trick!

Now, here are some examples of (fake) links that do not use meaningful link text:

Try reading only the blue, underlined linked text for both sets of examples; take a minute and read them out loud to yourself. Notice the difference? Imagine someone using a screen reader app and tabbing through the links in that second list; they would hear the screen reader say, "Learn more. - Watch now. - Download. - Click here." Completely meaningless! Learn more about what? Watch what? Et cetera.

(Note: We should always avoid "click here" language in general, in all digital materials — because mobile users tap!)

I wanna talk about the first example in that last list, "New efficacy data for [Brand] — learn more." This is where I think a lot of my colleagues get stuck. They'll write a line like that one, and they'll tell me it's meaningful, because it says right there in the sentence that this link is about efficacy data. What they're missing is that we need to make that clear within the linked (blue, underlined) text. And they don't realize or understand this because they don't know how screen reader software works, and how people with disabilities use that software. Again, I'm talking about how users tab from link to link and only hear that linked text. That's the key. This is what a lot of people are missing. And now you know!

Meaningful link text and implications for copywriting

Sometimes using meaningful link text means we have to write our copy in a certain way; of course we have to be careful in how we word our links. However, sometimes it's simply a matter of which words we choose to put in the link. Check it out; these are all examples of good meaningful link text:

And below, these are essentially the same lines of copy as above, but they're linked in a way that makes them non-meaningful:

Get it? The difference is not in how the copy is written; it's in which text we've chosen to link!

(And, remember, "click" is not great; we can do better than "click." But including "click" within some meaningful link text doesn't hurt its accessibility. It's just not great copywriting for digital.)

Other benefits of using meaningful link text

By the way, meaningful link text is also more engaging for people without visual impairments. When a typically-sighted user is skimming a big block of text or a stack of paragraphs, good contextual words in a link will make the link jump out to them and potentially hook them — way more than a "learn more" or a "click here" will. I say this all the time: all of the rules for accessibility make our work easier to engage with for people both with and without disabilities. Following accessibility guidelines benefits everyone!

And on top of that, meaningful link text is great for SEO, too.

Every little thing we can do to help enhance accessibility in our digital work leads to better engagement and more success for our clients!

Sidebar: screen readers, tabbing, and navigation

By the way, I want to mention something about screen readers and tabbing from link to link. Tabbing in this way is how a user would go through our website's main navigation — they can listen to the full list of pages that are available. However, as you might imagine, every time the user arrives at a new page on the site, and they start tabbing, they would (potentially) have to listen to the entire list of nav items again before they arrive at the main content on the page. This is a terrible user experience. So, this is the reason that every site should have a "Skip to main content button," so that as soon as the user arrives on a new page, the very first time they press tab, they get this option. I wrote an article about this concept, along with the html/css code to implement it, here: Add a "skip to main content" button to your website template!

– Manning

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Questions/comments? Feel free to contact me at manning@manningkrull.com. I update these articles pretty frequently — best practices evolve over time as the world of digital quickly changes, and I always welcome insights from others.