Links
Avoid the duplication of information. If the information already exists on www.yorksj.ac.uk or is better supplied by another organisation you should link to that location instead.
Do not place all of your links at the bottom of the page. Provide links at the point they are useful to your readers.
Avoid links mid-paragraph. Finish your paragraph and add links at the end.
This makes it easier for people wishing to complete the paragraph without distractions, people using screen readers, older readers, and people with cognitive impairments.
Link text
Link text should indicate where a user will go or what information the user will find at the destination.
Never use vague phrases such as 'click here' or 'find out more'.
Link text should be short, readable and descriptive. It can be a good idea to reference the destination Page Title within the link text. This helps confirm to users that the link has taken them to the correct location. Use the same capitalisation as on the page you are linking to.
If you are linking to a website's homepage you can refer to the website as a whole. For example if you were linking to https://ysjsu.com/ you could use 'the Students' Union website' as the link text.
For example:
✔ Visit our Short courses & CPD page for more information
✔ On Short courses & CPD you will find ...
✘ Visit https://www.yorksj.ac.uk/study/short-courses--cpd/ for more information
✘ To find out more about our Short courses, click here.
Linking to documents
Avoid linking to documents.
If you must link to a document then let the user know the document name, file type and file size in the link text. If the link starts a file download be sure to make this clear in the supporting text before the link.
This helps people who have limited bandwidth or data or who do not have the device memory to store the download. Remember that 40% of users access our website via mobile.
For example:
✔ Click to start downloading the Accommodation Allocation Policy for 2019 to 2020 (PDF, 0.2MB)
✘ You can find out more by reading about how we allocate accommodation.
Linking to email addresses and telephone numbers
Always use the email address or telephone number as the link text.
This makes sure that the information the user needs is always visible and is not hidden behind link text such as 'Email the Content team'.
For guidance on how to format telephone numbers see the Telephone numbers entry.
Link writing resources
Guidance for creating usable and accessible links can be found on this Google document by Dan does content.
A list of research backing up our suggestions can be found on the Readability Guidelines.
Accessibility experts speak about embedded links and online reading accessibility in this YouTube video.