It’s a general best practice and it’s critical for accessibility to have contextually relevant links. In other words, clickable text on your page should be relevant to the context and clearly identify the target of the link. Accessibility expert, Jim Thatcher, provides in-depth information about the barrier non-contextual links pose to users of assistive technology.
Google and other search engines rank pages higher in search results that have contextual links.
But…
For one reason or another, instances occur when adding context to a link just doesn’t work. Perhaps it seems redundant, the text just doesn’t fit, or the designer really wants tons of “Read More” buttons.
How to Add Non-Visible Link Context
The solution for each of our content management systems is a little different. Following are links to site specific instructions:
- the college web team’s Drupal,
- UT Blogs WordPress (studio sites).
Video Demo
The video below is a demonstration of how Apple’s VoiceOver screen reader reads a link with visually hidden text. In our example, the “Read more” link contains the visually hidden text: “about the cutest kittens on the Internet.”
Watch our hidden link context demo on YouTube.
