(As inspired by Plain English for corporate intranet content by @Luke_Oatham, and Technical communication and inclusion by @kmdk)
1. For information about fish, click here
2. Click here for information about fish
Answer: If you're blind/vision impaired and using a screen reader (which reads the page aloud), and you opt for the handy/commonly used 'read me all the links on this page, please' option, they respectively read like this:
1. click here
...out of those two, option one doesn't mean anything and option two does. That has to be about the simplest way to improve accessibility ever. (And it sounds better, too.)
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I agree that 2. is better than 1. - but 2. doesn't really need "Click here". In fact, it's confusing, because strictly speaking, you don't click "here" (since "here" is dead), but "there".
ReplyDeleteAs long as you can tell links from non-links, any sentence such as "And then there's more information about fish." will do.
Spot on! Any writer worth a fraction of their weight in salt ought to be able to write something more valuable than "click here" or "read more". This is a simple - and free - step on the road to better and improved accessibility. Thank you. :)
ReplyDeleteClarification: something more valuable than "click here" or "read more" _in the hyperlinked part_ of course. (Sheesh. I should learn how to write.)
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately it's not quite as simple as that, because studies have shown that "click here" has a higher conversion rate than linking in a more accessible, logical way - and in a commercial setting, you're always going to be under pressure to prioritise higher conversion over 'doing the right thing'.
ReplyDeleteI guess a sensible middle ground is probably the best solution - making the entire sentence (including "click here") into a link, for example.
@Kai, that's a good point, but I worry about what people are most accustomed too - 'click here' is the most prevalent form of wording.
ReplyDeleteI think @Matthew is on the money - converting the whole sentence to a link communicates everything required, and also indicates to a blind/vision impaired user that the link is text-embedded rather than being a menu item, for example.