Looking to expand your knowledge of digital accessibility and learn quick strategies that you can easily integrate into your workflow? CATL’s blog post series on digital accessibility catalogues some helpful tips and tricks we’ve shared in our Teach Tuesday e-newsletter!
In this tip, we’ll discuss how to detect and remediate broken links and how to write useful, meaningful link text
Checking for Broken Links in Canvas
- The Canvas link validator can quickly scan your course for potential broken links, including links to unpublished or deleted content, links to resources in another Canvas course, and links to external webpages that are returning “page not found” errors.
- After updating the broken links identified by the validator, use the “Restart Link Validation” button to run a scan again.
- Consider using the link validator at least once before the start of each semester and whenever you make substantial content changes to a course.
- To learn more about remediating broken links, see this CATL resource on avoiding broken links in Canvas.
Creating Meaningful Links
- Providing meaningful text for links helps users understand what to expect when they click a link. It clearly conveys the destination or action of the link and also makes it easier for users who rely on assistive technology to navigate between links.
- Unfortunately, people too often simply paste a website URL at the end of a sentence when creating a document or web resource. Screen readers will read out URLs letter-by-letter, including hyphens, slashes, and other characters, which is why using long or complicated URLs should be avoided as link text.
- For links with long URLs, use a concise description of the resource or page as the link text instead. (ex: UW-Green Bay Mission Statement).
- Short URLs, such as a site home page, can also be used as link text (ex: uwgb.edu).
- Another common error is using vague phrases like “click here” as link text. Link text should instead be informative, descriptive, and make sense out of context.
- In most applications, you can create a hyperlink with meaningful text simply by highlighting the text you want to add a link to and selecting the “insert link” option from a toolbar or the right-click context menu.
- To learn more about these concepts and see examples, visit the WebAim guide on links and hypertext.
Looking for More Tips?
Explore even more quick tips in our Digital Accessibility Tips post, where you’ll find a growing list of strategies to help make your course materials more accessible.
Further Accessibility Training
Ready to dive deeper into digital accessibility? Essentials of Accessibility for Faculty and Staff is a free, self-paced, online course that will teach you the basics of digital accessibility and accessibility best practices for several key applications that UW-Green Bay employees may use in their daily work. We encourage you to self-enroll in the course to learn practical approaches for remediating digital accessibility issues in a variety of use cases and applications.
Connect with CATL
You are not alone in your accessibility journey! While CATL cannot advise on the legal specifications of Title II, instructors are always welcome to schedule a consultation with us or stop by our office (CL 405) to discuss the accessibility of your teaching materials.