Research Guides: NYU LibGuide Accessibility: Contextual Links

Overview

The display text for a link should let the user know what the link will take them. (All links in this guide are contextual, for example.)
The text should be informative enough that a user would still know what the link was even if there were no context around it.
Screen reader users may select to hear a list of all the links on a page.

NYU Digital Accessibility: Creating Meaningful and Contextual Links
NYU Digital Accessibility's knowledge-base article regarding Creating Meaningful and Contextual Links.
LibGuide A11y Bites: Contextual Links (Google Slides)
UX Contextual Links presentation in Google Slides.

Use the “Link” option instead of just making a hyperlink in the regular text. The Link feature will create a reusable asset. Be sure to include the following:
- Description
- Select “show description under item”
- Select the open lock icon for open access materials

How to add, reuse, and edit Link assets
Link assets are ideal for adding web links to your guides. Because Link assets are stored in your assets library, once someone creates a link it can be reused over and over in other guides. Plus, unlike adding links inside of a Rich Text/HTML content item, Link assets provide statistics on the number clicks they receive throughout your guides.

Example: To learn more about how to format links within LibGuides, review the Springshare hyperlink documentation.

WebAIM's Tutorial on Link Best Practices
Link Text and Appearance guidelines from WebAIM (Web Accessibility in Mind).
Accessible U: Hyperlinks
You can improve both the usability and accessibility of hyperlinks by embedding them in text and making them clear, concise, and meaningful out of context. Sighted users visually scan pages for links to help them find what they're looking for. People using screen readers can do the same thing: At the touch of a button, they can pull up a list of all the links on a page. As you learn more about links on this page, think about links that would be most useful to you in a list like that.