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Usability, User Experience Design
Read More and Click Here Links July 29th, 2009
The recent posting on Smashing Magazine, Designing “Read More” And “Continue Reading” Links, made me chuckle. To read about advocating ‘click here’ links baffles me. WCAG 13.1 states Clearly identify the target of each link.
Link text should be meaningful enough to make sense when read out of context — either on its own or as part of a sequence of links. Link text should also be terse.
For example, in HTML, write “Information about version 4.3″ instead of “click here”. In addition to clear link text, content developers may further clarify the target of a link with an informative link title (e.g., in HTML, the “title” attribute).
There is no gray area here. The comments on this article add a fair amount of value by touching upon accessibility, screen readers, and SEO.
One Comment for "Read More and Click Here Links"
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I do find it funny they have a “Best Practices” for read more links.
But their comment; “…most importantly because they allow designers to compress content on the home page…” is the key one. In several instances companies don’t care about WCAG validation.
The US Government doesn’t require WCAG, just 508.
It’s a trade-off. I believe in accessibility, but you shouldn’t necessarily let accessibility dictate solutions for you in every circumstance. It just depends.
Tony on January 6th, 2010 at 7:50 am
