What do we mean?
Accessible means something is usable by as many people as possible, regardless of their cognitive, physical or cultural situation.
We have a responsibility as educators, as humans and by law to make content digitally accessible.
Links, hyperlinks or URLs are shortcuts that can take you to a different document or webpage.
Accessible Links
Links are a powerful feature of digital documents and webpages. They can be used to highlight resources and simplify navigation for users if their functionality is clear to all users.
What should I do?
- Links need an accurate and descriptive title so it is easy to understand what the link is about and where it is going
- Use links to help users navigate through a document or webpage.
- Avoid using "opens in new tab/window" (even if it is possible in Moodle!).
Why do it?
- Users with blind or low vision may lack the contextual information to understand what a "click here" link means. Screen reader users will often scan through the links in a document or webpage to find where to go next.
- Screen readers sometimes read out URLs one letter at a time - instead descriptive text functioning as a link avoids this.
- For users with autism, meaningful and precise links can remove confusion around navigation.
- For all users, descriptive links remove ambiguity and ease navigation in a document or webpage.
To add a descriptive link in Microsoft products (including Word, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams):
- Write your descriptive link name (e.g. BBC News Homepage) and use your cursor to select the text
- Right click and select Link (alternatively use keyboard shortcut Ctrl K). If you already have pasted a link, you can right click and Edit Hyperlink.
- Paste in the web address to the address box (see example below).
To add a link in Moodle, the process is similar:
- Write your descriptive link name (e.g. BBC News Homepage) and use your cursor to select the text.
- From the editor toolbar, select the Link icon (alternatively use keyboard shortcut Ctrl K)
- Paste in the web address to the URL box.
- Avoid ambiguous, repeated or common, non-descript link names. For example: click here, download, more.
- Give context and information about the link target in the link text.
- Do not use the full web address as the link text. For example: Moodle Accessibility Essentials Resource - Links instead of
https://moodle.bath.ac.uk/mod/book/view.php?id=1043529&chapterid=30653 (the latter would give the user no information
about the purpose of the link and a screenreader software may also struggle)
- This can be disorientating for people (especially those who have difficulty perceiving visual content).
- This prevents the use of the back button. Even for external links, the back button usually returns you to the place you left off.
- Users can elect to open the link in a new window with (Windows: right-click then open in new tab, Ctrl-click, middle click; Mac: Control-click).
- This is best practice. There are many inaccessible common practices, which include opening link in new tab for external sites and these are slowly changing - opening links in new tabs should be actively avoided.
There are few exceptions when it can be useful to open a link in a new window/tab. In this both cases, you should use clearly state (opens in new window) in the hyperlinked text.
- a user has started media playing (e.g. audio explanation) and opening a link in the current page would stop this.
- a user is completing an action on the page (e.g. H5P activity) and opening a link in the current page would lose the user's progress.
Activity: review the link text
Read the scenario and find the mistakes with the different link text wordings.
Additional information
Updated on: 8 September 2022