Don’t use “click here” as link text (2001)

https://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/noClickHere

by theandrewbailey • 1 year ago

520 330 1 year ago

w3.org

stogot2• 1 year ago

I actually prefer what they don’t recommend, and I don’t know why

chungy• 1 year ago

Same here. This is just a style guideline that W3C has no real business in determining.

sham1• 1 year ago

Well good thing that this style guide is just what W3C considers best practices and is not a standard.

While the tips are carefully reviewed by the participants of the group, they should not be seen as anything else than informative bits of wisdom, and especially, they are not normative W3C technical specifications.

hombre_fatal4• 1 year ago

We shouldn't be so sensitive.

[Our published tips] should not be seen as anything else than informative bits of wisdom, and especially, they are not normative W3C technical specifications.

lionkor• 1 year ago

Me, too. The way they recommend feels like a "link to a Wikipedia article", not a call to action

empiko• 1 year ago

Yeah, Wikipedia, but also many news sites use this style. It is mostly not a call to action, but additional optional information you can check out. That's why it feels wrong to use it in these cases. I think that some of the examples are outdated compared to how people format the web nowadays.

mannykannot• 1 year ago

I do too - it tells the reader what they have to do in order to bring about the desired result, more directly than do any of the alternatives.

kleiba• 1 year ago

I remember that I often got confused in the early days of Wikipedia because the way they use link text was different from what was common on the web back in the day.

ceejayoz2• 1 year ago

I used to make websites for internal use at a hospital by docs.

“Click here” is just the start. Bold, red, and blinking. People barely read, let alone process what they’re reading. “Click here” is at least simple.

JadeNB4• 1 year ago

One reason they omit is that, by default, bookmark text is (was? I hardly bookmark any more) the text of the link. So, if you don't curate your bookmarks carefully, you get a folder full of bookmarks called "Click here!"

xnx4• 1 year ago

bookmark text is (was? I hardly bookmark any more) the text of the link

I'm not sure I've seen this behavior. More commonly, it is the <title> of the page.

Cthulhu_5• 1 year ago

Based on the comment I'd expect an "add link to bookmarks" entry in the right click context menu, but I don't remember ever seeing it. It makes sense to use the link text in that case though, else the browser would have to access the underlying webpage to fetch the title. Which shouldn't be a problem, but at one point some web apps were broken and did destructive actions on GET requests, and Google Gears tried to optimize the internet by prefetching webpages... which caused some whoopsies.

But, thankfully, web developers and web technology improved since then.

JadeNB4• 1 year ago

I think it depends on how you get the bookmark. As far as I can tell, on mobile Firefox (the mobile browser I have easily to hand), you can only bookmark the page you are currently visiting, where the default bookmark title is the title of the page. But, on desktop Firefox, you can also create a bookmark directly from a link, in which case the default bookmark title is the text of the link. This makes some sense to me, since you probably wouldn't want the act of bookmarking a link to fetch the linked page just to find out its title.

scary-size• 1 year ago

The UK's Government Digital Services make a similar recommendation [1] in their accessibility guidelines.

[1] https://design.homeoffice.gov.uk/accessibility/links

rerdavies4• 1 year ago

Their recommendation is very different.

W3c says:

    Get *Amaya*
    Read more about *Amaya*

The home office says:

    *Get Amaya*
    *Read more about Amaya*

which seems much more sensible, but suffers from a different problem when used in context.

Personally, I think both are confounding two different use cases. Links are often used inline in text. The use case that W3c and the Home Office are addressing are use cases that would be better address by out-of-line buttons:

    [Download]
    [Documentation]

But both seem broken when the use case is hyperlinks in inline text.

To use a concrete example, how should one rewrite the following?

    PiPedal is a guitar effects pedal that runs 
    on Raspberry Pi. To download PiPedal, *click here*.
    To read the documentation, *click here*.

I get the objection. But the fix seems unacceptable:

    PiPedal is a guitar effects pedal that runs 
    on Raspberry Pi. Get Pipedal. Read the documentation.

Nuh uh. Not happening. I'm not sure what you would call that. Meta-grammatically incorrect? Whatever it is, it is not idiomatic English.

   Pipedal is a guitar effects pedal that runs on
   Raspberry Pi. To download PiPedal, visit the *Download
   Page*. To learn more about Pipedal, view the
   *Documentation*.

Perhaps. That is the actual text I used in my documentation. But, speaking from personal experience, the challenge is that it is often very difficult to nounify "click here"

   Ubuntu Server installs don't suffer from this problem;
   but before choosing an Ubuntu Server install, you
   should read the *Ubuntu Server* section of the 
   "Installing on Ubuntu" page.

Which makes one wonder, what exactly is the foul that's being committed when "here" is used as a pronoun for the content that's being referenced? In this use case, there is not an actual accessibility issue, because the the link sits inline within a sentence that provides all the context that's necessary to indicate what to expect when you click.

And in the very first example given, the text is from a lede in a web page where concision matters.

   To download PiPedal, click *here*.

Is that really an accessibility issue? particularly when there's are buttons right above it that say

    [ Download ] [ Documentation ]

The actual metric that counts here is: how many times will people visit the Download page? And from that perspective there is significant doubt in my mind as to whether the following text will be better.

  To download PiPedal, visit the *Download Page*.

stavros2• 1 year ago

I can't believe you verbified "noun".

hapidjus• 1 year ago

    PiPedal is a guitar effects pedal that runs on Raspberry Pi. *To download PiPedal, click here*.
    *To read the documentation, click here*.

LocalPCGuy2• 1 year ago

...accessibility issue? particularly when there's are buttons right above it that say...

Yes, those buttons may not be "in context" when the page is not being viewed in a visual medium.

To download PiPedal, click here.

Another appropriate link in this case could be simply:

  *Download PiPedal* now!

Or like your last example, just link it slightly differently to emphasize the action:

  To *download PiPedal*, visit the Download Page.

manarth• 1 year ago

    PiPedal is a guitar effects pedal that runs 
    on Raspberry Pi.
    You can *download PiPedal*, and learn more
    in the *PiPedal documentation*.

jskelly• 1 year ago

    PiPedal is a guitar effects pedal that runs on 
    Raspberry Pi.
    *Download PiPedal* now (MIT license) 
    or read all about it in the *PiPedal documentation*.

edited in an attempt to fix my bad formatting (4x and I'm not doing it anymore no matter if I finally got it right or not)

Cthulhu_5• 1 year ago

We frequently reference this website / guideline for a reference of maximally accessible components / web design, it's really good. Not the prettiest (thick black / yellow borders on form components and the like), but accessibility trumps design.

dkdbejwi383• 1 year ago

accessibility trumps design

Good design is accessible by nature. Otherwise it’s just sparkling wank.

baggachipz• 1 year ago

Counterpoint to the other opinions so far:

I feel like a link should be used for more information retrieval; therefore, the link should be descriptive of its forthcoming content. Instead of using a link as a call to action, shouldn't it be a button? This feels more "pure" in the semantic web context.

Cthulhu_5• 1 year ago

For sure; as other commenters pointed out that "click here" is unnecessary, as you can assume people know how links work. That is, it's not a call to action, unless the CTA is to "read more" about something or to "go to" a download page. But the action is to navigate, nothing more. If the action is to do something else, like start a download or submit a form, it should be a button.

Of course, a download on the internet is usually a link to a file, which the browser decides how to handle - open or download. From an internet purist point of view, a link to download a file also makes sense.

jxjnskkzxxhx3• 1 year ago

Exactly what is wrong about "to do XYZ click here"?

alabhyajindal• 1 year ago

From the suggestion email¹:

"Click here" assumes everyone has a computer and mouse. And it's not even needed: most users of the Web understand how to follow links.

1. https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-qa/2001Sep/0007.htm...

jxjnskkzxxhx3• 1 year ago

Sounds equivalent to saying we shouldnt the words "he" or "she" because some people identify with neither. Exclusionary towards people of different mouse abilities.

micromacrofoot• 1 year ago

it's a little pedantic, but hyperlinks should describe what you get when you click on them

not "<a>click here</a> to read more about dogs" but "read more in our <a>article about dogs</a>"

imagine not being able to see and tabbing through a series of "click here"s

jaas• 1 year ago

The idea is that some people don’t click - that refers mainly to people using a mouse, and many people are not using a mouse. So it is overstating information about what to do.

robin_reala• 1 year ago

If you think about this from an accessibility point of view, screen readers for blind users present a linear view of a page. To escape from the linear view, they also typically allow users to access lists of elements like headers and links, out of context of their original position. If every link is labelled “click here” then you’re effectively removing non-linear access from those users.

charcircuit4• 1 year ago

A screen reader should be smart enough to read out what the link is for.

hombre_fatal4• 1 year ago

How do you imagine that working? By reading surrounding text or by reading the URL? Those are worse experiences than descriptive anchor text.

You can use something like macOS VoiceOver right now to see how it behaves.

donatj• 1 year ago

What I have learned after years of working with accessibility experts is that screen readers are largely incapable pieces of junk that need to be lead around manually.

They don't try to be helpful, they only do exactly what they are told.

Frankly I think there's rear space for interruption here, particularly with AI.

pacifika2• 1 year ago

Why would every client process the context to the link, when the author can do this once and add it to the link, that's much more efficient.

stogot2• 1 year ago

That’s amsomething I had not considered that changes my mind on this

cluckindan6• 1 year ago

Screen readers commonly provide several different ways to navigate on the page, and linear movement through the page is the least efficient method. Users can move e.g. between landmarks or between headings, or both at once in an ”outline” navigation mode.

Crucially: screen reader navigation is NOT the same as keyboard navigation.

layer88• 1 year ago

There are techniques to solve that:

https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG22/Techniques/html/H33

https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG22/Techniques/css/C7

However, I don’t know how well the first one is supported by screen readers.

(Edit: Updated the links from WCAG 2.0 to 2.2.)

cluckindan6• 1 year ago

For a more up-to-date version, see WCAG 2.2:

https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG22/Understanding/link-purpose-in-...

amenghra• 1 year ago

In a similar vain to the second link, I previously wrote about using css to truncate git hashes so that search functionality continues to work: https://www.quaxio.com/truncating_hashes.html

bevr1337• 1 year ago

I'm particularly fond of the latter approach. There's some joy in applying hints that can be optionally read and only provide clarity. It's a great writing challenge.

I did sweat localization with this approach. We use a workflow to ensure some peer review but it's an added challenge. Seemingly all good.

joelanman• 1 year ago

it's true, but these are more fragile than simply having clear link text, especially over time as a site is maintained

phkahler2• 1 year ago

And if every link is just "Amaya" without verbs you can't tell what's what. So I think "get Amaya" and "go to the Amaya website" are rather fine.

Also poor form is to have your download button on github.io pulling an executable from malware sites like sourceforge. I'm looking at you wxMaxima.

raincole2• 1 year ago

Go to the [Amaya Website](www.amaya.com) is perfectly fine. I seriously have a hard time understanding what this w3.org article is trying to say.

A website is a website. To download is to download. The mechanics won't be 'abstracted away' just because you don't call them with the proper terms.

jchw4• 1 year ago

I don't think this recommendation is suggesting it would be any better to do that; having a bunch of different links be just Amaya would be wrong too. If you had this situation you'd probably want to carefully choose different selections, e.g. "get [Amaya]", "Amaya [documentation]", etc.

If you need to disambiguate or further clarify links, well, you should also set the title attributes too. That ought to help.

oneeyedpigeon• 1 year ago

And if every link is just "Amaya" without verbs you can't tell what's what.

I'm pretty sure the W3C is not recommending you do that. If you link to the Amaya website, link on the text "Amaya". If you're linking to something else Amaya-related, modify the link text appropriately.

ano-ther• 1 year ago

That’s a good argument.

I would still include more of the action, i.e., ”Get Amaya“ instead of ”Amaya“ as in the article.

mattl• 1 year ago

But you’re not getting anything. You’re just surfing to the Amaya website.

MangoToupe• 1 year ago

Ironically, we really need to figure out away to make accessibility tooling more accessible to those who don't have a need for them. I'm not saying alter the tool, but surely there's got to be a way to visualize this for those who aren't going to put the work into figuring out how screen readers work.

nodar86• 1 year ago

This sounds like a great idea, does anyone know a tool like that?

hombre_fatal4• 1 year ago

Ideas for a browser plugin:

- Toggle/hide aria-hidden items from the page so you can ensure only the important components are there

- Show the ordered list of links, headings, landmarks you'd see in screen readers like when you use the VO+U rotor in macOS VoiceOver

- Toggle on a mode where a little "?" appears next to anything with an aria-description that can be hovered as a tooltip

Prob would be a decent start.

Though I recommend the more curious HNer to fire up macOS VoiceOver, do its tutorial (Settings -> Accessibility -> VoiceOver -> "Open VoiceOver Tutorial..."), and then navigate your own website. Use Safari for this since it has the best VoiceOver behavior.

It's very eye opening (heh) and helps you understand what things like aria-hidden actually are for.

If that's not enough, it also prepares you for bad luck in the future, and it's also just cool being able to use your computer with your eyes closed.

I had some classes in uni where we weren't allowed to use our laptop screens, and I bet I could have gotten away with having my hands inside a half closed laptop with an airpod in my ear scrolling HN/Reddit while the professor droned on for an hour.

SilasX2• 1 year ago

I already kind of get this with extensions that let you browse from the keyboard (e.g. click a link without using the mouse) like Tridactyl. It lets me know when clickable elements are not detected as clickable, and, sadly, this happens quite a lot.

rerdavies4• 1 year ago

Sure. but who labels every link in there header as "click here"? A completely different use-case from inline hyperlinks.

bmacho• 1 year ago

Surely this is not true, a screen reader must be able to read text with html links inside, and be able to open the next/current/previous link. What is it able to do, if not that?

Anyway, "click here" is more accessible for anyone else, since links should look like links, and random half-bold words in a wall of text are not cutting it.

Vegenoid• 1 year ago

From my naive point of view, this seems a very easy problem for screen readers to solve, especially with LLMs: if the link does not describe what it is, include context like the preceding phrase.

inopinatus• 1 year ago

I find the accessibility concern a much more compelling argument than this article’s focus on “calls to action”, which is primarily a marketing/engagement concern and one that therefore earns my automatic distrust.

jameshart• 1 year ago

One of my favorite accessibility accommodation attempts I have ever seen on a website: paragraph on the homepage saying

Click here for screen reader accessible version

It’s like… ‘click here. No, here. Left a bit. Almost. Come on, you can get it. What are you, blind or something?’

rerdavies4• 1 year ago

This seems inelegant:

    Get *Amaya*. 
    Tell me more about *Amaya*.

pooloo• 1 year ago

Inelegant was the state of the Internet back then, I loved it.

xp842• 1 year ago

Okay, but why not “Learn [More about Amaya]” ? More about Amaya is a noun phrase so it fits their standard.

rerdavies4• 1 year ago

My specific point of discomfort is that imperatives may be fine in menus, and lists, and buttons (where "click here" is never going to happen anyway). But as an inline hyperlink they seem idiomatically incorrect. "Learn more about Amaya" is still an imperative sentence.

I guess technically, "To learn more about Amaya, view the datasheet." is also an imperative sentence. But to my mind, it scans better as inline text. Not quite sure how to nounify that one either. And interestingly, inability to find the "learn more about" link on landing pages for products I'm interested in is a source of constant frustration for me. There should be a word for "something halfway between the the breathless lede on a landing page, and "here's a thousand pages of documentation". For hardware products, the "datasheet" is exactly what I'm looking for; there doesn't seem to be an equivalent for software products.

piqufoh2• 1 year ago

From the bottom of the page;

contributed Sep 2001 by Aaron Swartz

Thoughts

-- this advice is 24 years old (and I think largely ignored)

-- Aaron Swartz (!)

piqufoh2• 1 year ago

Aaron's suggestion (which seems to have been lost?)

"Click here" assumes everyone has a computer and mouse. And it's not even needed: most users of the Web understand how to follow links.

xnx4• 1 year ago

most users of the Web understand how to follow links.

Often very hard to tell what's a link when it's not underlined and non-blue colors (or no color) is used.

netsharc2• 1 year ago

Yes, most people understand how to navigate around the jankiness...

For example, most Windows programs have "File" as the first menu item. How do I exit? Go to File, the bottom option is usually "Exit". Does that make sense? No, why is "Exit" a File-related option? Why is it like that? Because it's always been like that.

Want to learn about the program? Go to Help > About.

Some more geniuses even got involved and thought "If the user wants to edit preferences, well, they can go to the menu option Edit, and find Preferences. Never mind that Edit is otherwise filled with document related functions like Cut, Copy, and Paste!"

xnx4• 1 year ago

Jakob Nielsen's recommendation from 1996: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/accessible-design-for-users...

roryirvine• 1 year ago

Yes, this was common web design advice in the mid 90s, though often people's first response was to simply replace "Click here to..." with "Follow this link to...", which was almost as bad.

Fixing those was a large part of my life whilst working for a web design agency during the school holidays circa 1996-97 (providing plenty of incentive to learn find/grep/sed/perl!)

I guess this 2001 W3C 'Tips for Webmasters' page was merely stating the commonly-accepted best practice at the time.

px43• 1 year ago

He was 14 when he wrote that.

reddalo• 1 year ago

We lost him too soon.

fkyoureadthedoc• 1 year ago

Assuming that all their examples are consistent and actually download "Amaya", I'd prefer simply the hyperlink [Download Amaya](http://link-to-file).

Preferably with a download icon to indicate that it's going to be the actual file and not just a link to another page with the real download button hidden among 4 ads that are just download buttons.

fortran77• 1 year ago

I’m going to download Amaya now!

bravesoul22• 1 year ago

Click here!

scosman3• 1 year ago

Lighthouse also warns against generic link text, like “Learn More”. It’s one of the few lighthouse warnings I just ignore.

Cthulhu_5• 1 year ago

In which case you ignore people with screen readers and search engines, too.

thesuitonym2• 1 year ago

Learn more is perfectly descriptive for people with screen readers.

mrweasel2• 1 year ago

How about changing the text ever so slightly, so rather than just "Learn More" it's "Learn move about X"?

carlosjobim2• 1 year ago

Consider a product listings page, with a "Buy" button/link next to every product. Should those links be changed to differ from each other? Google Lighthouse sure thinks so, so it's better ignored.

scosman3• 1 year ago

There's a section with a nice header making it's clear it's about X, a paragraph with details about X. Adding redundant text in the button isn't improving design. "Learn more about Synthetic Data Generation" is a truly gnarly button. I have played with making the entire section the link, which makes lighthouse stop complaining, but is lousy for providing an affordance to the user that it's an action.

bArray4• 1 year ago

I disagree. I think we need to make it clear that following hyperlinks should always be a cognitive choice.

To download W3C's editor/browser Amaya, [click here].

This gives you an option, where multiple options may be available.

To download Amaya, go to the [Amaya Website] and get the necessary software.

This is even better, as 'click here' assumes the input device.

Get [Amaya]!

Whilst being simpler, it does not make clear that the action is optional.

Whether I click something may require some additional information around the link, for example:

To download W3C's free editor/browser Amaya, go to the [Amaya Website] and select the latest version on the home page.

Now I know that it's free, and I have instructions to carry out to find what I'm looking for.

Cthulhu_5• 1 year ago

This is very much from a sighted person's point of view. When you use screen readers, you can switch to a 'links' navigation mode and only go through links, in which case all you'd hear would be "click here", "Amaya website" and "Amaya".

See also https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG22/Understanding/link-purpose-in-..., also keeping in mind that since June, the underlying WCAG guideline is a EU-wide legal requirement for company websites.

tempfile• 1 year ago

I don't think this is right. The WCAG allows for "programmatically determined link context" which includes text surrounding the actual link. "click here" is bad but "Amaya website" or "Amaya" are fine.

e.g. from the WCAG examples you link to:

An account registration page requires successful completion of a [Turing test](https://www.w3.org/TR/turingtest/) before the registration form can be accessed.

bArray4• 1 year ago

This is very much from a sighted person's point of view. When you use screen readers, you can switch to a 'links' navigation mode and only go through links, in which case all you'd hear would be "click here", "Amaya website" and "Amaya".

I think this is a UX problem with screen readers, and actually probably something LLMs might massively help with. If I was designing something for screen readers, I would probably have interactive elements within a context window, i.e.:

    <context>To download W3C's free editor/browser Amaya, go to the <a href="..">Amaya Website</a> and select the latest version on the home page.</context>

The user would hear "Amaya Website" and would then have some ability to also hear the link context. For pages missing the context windows some attempt could be made to create one automatically.

See also https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG22/Understanding/link-purpose-in-... , also keeping in mind that since June, the underlying WCAG guideline is a EU-wide legal requirement for company websites.

On this page itself, within the box "Success Criterion (SC)" the listener would hear "purpose of each link", "programmatically determined link context", "ambiguous to users in general". The last one is, well, ambiguous to users in general. Even as a sighted person, without selecting it, I wouldn't know what it is actually going to link to.

I would say that the web is generally actively hostile towards screen readers, and not because of a lack of WCAG adoption. You have text in images (not just static, but also GIFs), JS heavy components, delayed loading, dependant interactions (such as captchas, navigation drop downs, etc), infinite scrolling - the list just goes on. The web is primary a highly visual space and likely will remain so.

I don't think the EU's accessibility act is actually enforceable [1]. Unlike cookies, some of the changes required are massive, to the point where it may not even be worth existing in the EU market if it's enforced.

Incorporating captions into video content, as well as providing audio descriptions and transcripts

Even proving you are compliant is a lot of cost, which includes audits and training staff. You can always trust the EU to regulate itself out of being competitive.

[1] https://www.wcag.com/compliance/european-accessibility-act/

ivan_gammel• 1 year ago

I don’t think either of the suggested options delivers the best possible UX. Copy of course depends on context, but „click here“ is never justified as the best alternative.

You can do:

• [Download X] - immediate download link.

• [Learn more about X] - go to webpage, discover other interactions there

• [Register to download X] - if registration required

Short and concise copy is generally better, extra information rarely makes content better.

bArray4• 1 year ago

I think it really depends on the context. In a news article it rarely makes the content better, but in a documentation wiki, the context can be everything. I think we are fooling ourselves to suggest that there is zero nuance and that there is a 100% correct approach always.

hnlmorg3• 1 year ago

Best:

You can download the Amaya Browser from [Amaya’s download page]

It’s both explicit for sighted reader and screen readers too.

Yes there’s some duplicated words. But the point of that paragraph isn’t to be artistic, it’s to be informative. You can save the creative word play for your regular paragraphs.

LocalPCGuy2• 1 year ago

I would even say you could go with if duplicated words is an issue:

  You can [get the Amaya Browser] from the download page

bArray4• 1 year ago

I still think that the missing context is an issue. Imagine the page is some 10k words, by the time you get to the bottom, you might not remember what "Amaya" is. So just saying "Amaya's download page" tells the user that it is a download, but nothing about what it is a download for.

I wonder how successful the screen reader experience is for using the web. Without checking URLs, how can they be sure for example they don't enter this credit card details on http://bank.xyz/scam_page , rather than https://bank.com ?

Or how do they know whether the download page automatically downloads the file whilst they are on it?

I can only imagine that using the web is extremely difficult.

1970-01-01• 1 year ago

W3C missed the biggest problems (IMHO) with "click here"

* It's only 10 char and much too short for someone to click when it's inline with other links. Let's not mention text squirming around the screen via molasses JS, kicking your text up, down, and around the screen for several seconds before those short 10 chars finally become stationary.

* With high resolution touch screens, you're maybe 80% accurate on actually clicking right there. Again, my accuracy is my fat finger, and nearby links are just UI landmines.

layer88• 1 year ago

If a 10-character text link poses significant problems to be actuated, then something is really wrong with either the browser or the web page, not with the fact of having a 10-character link.

thesuitonym2• 1 year ago

It's only 10 char and much too short for someone to click when it's inline with other links. Let's not mention text squirming around the screen via molasses JS, kicking your text up, down, and around the screen for several seconds before those short 10 chars finally become stationary.

That was much less of a problem in 2010, and either way not really something for the size of your hyperlink to fix.

kerblang• 1 year ago

Aye! Big fat isolated links win it for me. Can barely use touchscreens. Even with a mouse I am somewhat handicapped. The world has no sympathy. We need some kind of medical condition like "Slob Syndrome" to shame & guilt people with.

jasonlfunk• 1 year ago

The verb seems pretty important to me…

————- Learn more about [the browser]

Never hear about [the browser] again

Those links will do very different things.

dsr_• 1 year ago

_Tell me more about Amaya_

is preferable to any shorter link.

If, somehow, you have multiple links in a sentence, see if you can manage a word or two of unlinked text in between, or, better yet, stop being pretentious and focus on usefulness.

Not: _You can run web browsers,_ _spreadsheets_ or _drawing software._

You can run:

* _web browsers_

* _spreadsheets_

* _drawing software_

Mordisquitos• 1 year ago

_Tell me more about Amaya_
is preferable to any shorter link.

I agree, but my reasoning is not about length but about semantics. The 'Tell me more about' part carries meaningful intention and makes no sense without the link, so it should be part of the link together with 'Amaya'.

If on the other hand the example sentence was, say, 'You may be interested in Amaya: W3C's free editor/browser...' I would agree that the link should be limited to 'Amaya'—the meaning carried by the 'You may be interested in' part is tangential to the hyperlink.

0xbadcafebee2• 1 year ago

I like it when pages tell me to "click here". It is clear and direct communication that doesn't assume I will infer exactly where I'm supposed to click for what thing. Not everyone sees or intuitively understands things the same way you do.

eCa• 1 year ago

Not everyone sees or intuitively understands things the same way you do.

That is true. And some people don’t see.

0xbadcafebee2• 1 year ago

I'm fully aware. I grew up with a kid who was almost blind.

Images can contain alt text metadata, but links can't. Why? Because some genius with an opinion decided links aren't allowed to have alt-text. The rationale for why links can't contain alt-text:

  Using alt text on a hyperlink would be redundant and potentially confusing for screen reader users, who may hear both the hyperlink text and the alt text

Except we see here a great example of why this is wrong. We could tell a sighted user to click here, and simultaneously add alt-text that describes "this is a hyperlink which downloads the software". (which, by the way, would also help sighted people!!) An author drafting the link could choose what text is shown for the link, and what (if any) is shown for the alt-text. It doesn't have to be confusing.

Yet with the current mandatory design examples, it is confusing! The suggested link text is just the name of the product!! What's the link going to do when you click it? Download something? Render a page? Show an image? Something else? How is that helping a blind person OR a non-blind person?!

The spec should allow you to decide how the content is presented, in a way that works for both blind and non-blind people. But we see here that, in order to make a "beautiful engineering design" that supports blind and sighted people, it's actually making it harder for both. If they took away their arbitrary restriction, the content creator could be free to craft it however makes sense, in a way that supports all people well, rather than all people poorly.

hammock2• 1 year ago

You like being told what to do and not having to figure it out yourself? Pay me $100 here: 35bSzXvRKLpHsHMrzb82f617cV4Srnt7hS

layer88• 1 year ago

Depends on context. You don’t want every link in a Wikipedia article to be worded with “click here”, for example.

guerrilla• 1 year ago

Okay but it doesn't say why. Why should one leave verbs out?

latexr• 1 year ago

The rule I follow is to write in a way that if all links were removed, it would still make sense. So “click here” never happens, because you can’t click text which isn’t a link.

With that singular idea in mind, everything else falls into place naturally.

flessner• 1 year ago

I get it that "click here" is not descriptive, but so is simply linking "Amaya". What is it? A person? A fruit?

People don't read websites linearly, in the best case they skim read all the buttons and links. I personally would include the verb as it gives important context and is a clearer CTA for the "skimmers".

Amaya is W3C's... "Download Amaya"!

retsibsi• 1 year ago

Personally, I prefer the second example that they advise against. ("To download Amaya, go to the _Amaya_Website_ and get the necessary software.")

A link that just says "Amaya" could be an internal or external link, and even if it's clear from context that the purpose of following the link is to download Amaya (rather than, for example, read more about it), it's not clear whether it's a direct link to the file or a link to the download page.

hammock2• 1 year ago

The internal vs external link has already been solved by the little icon that Wikipedia et al use

xixixao• 1 year ago

I like to include icons to indicate whether the destination is external or a file (file extension could work for files too)

cluckindan6• 1 year ago

Icons do nothing for screen readers, though. Use aria-describedby or aria-labelledby to add an ”external link” text suffix to the link text.

Note that aria-label does not work properly in all cases, e.g. when the browser chrome uses a different language than the site itself.

Aardwolf• 1 year ago

In the example "Get Amaya!" that they give:

Now that I paste it in this HN comment, the link is gone. If it had said "To get Amaya, click here!" at least you could have seen from the context that it used to be a link.

There's also no explanation in it for why making a verb a link would be bad while nouns are ok.

bravesoul22• 1 year ago

Feels like REST. Use nouns for the path (like the link text)

racl101• 1 year ago

# This is a loop that runs n number of times

xyst• 1 year ago

I suppose the reason this is posted here:

`contributed Sep 2001 by Aaron Swartz`

Wild to see how much this person contributed to the open web we use today. I think the most notable example was RSS? It’s a shame that rss feeds have been nuked from existence.

2OEH8eoCRo0• 1 year ago

Clickable hyperlinks are considered harmful IMO

ogou• 1 year ago

These are good recommendations from a usability and accessibility standpoint. But, marketing managers will bulldoze over all of it. These links are also Calls To Action in the marketing world. They will choose the most clicked version, which is usually the most simplistic and obvious. Many years of A/B/n testing has shown this to be true.

txdv• 1 year ago

click here to subscribe

WickyNilliams• 1 year ago

A compromise is to add visually hidden text to supplement, or use aria-label to override the accessible name of the link

iammrpayments• 1 year ago

This. I’d never do this on a landing page it would cause a lot of lost sales.

smjburton• 1 year ago

Another benefit of using text other than "click here" is that it's helpful for web crawlers too. Google, Bing, and other crawlers use link context (e.g. "lawn care in new jersey" vs "click here") to establish authority/relevance for the site being linked to. The closer the context of the link, the more authority a website (generally) gets for that topic.

nikolayasdf123• 1 year ago

I am found of Apple content design has "Learn more..." links at the end of paragraphs. Those look very consistent and look well

ashleyn• 1 year ago

Back in the days when Google was still driven largely by Pagerank, I remember googling the phrase "click here" for shits and giggles. The top links were for Flash player, Silverlight, and Java. Meaning that these were the most common links for the text "click here" - i.e. "Need Flash? Click here." Relic of a dark age where nothing was accessible and the performance didn't matter.

guhcampos• 1 year ago

Maybe it's because I'm old, but I have always instinctivelly thought of links as pointing to to nouns: links point to a place, and that place has a name, not a verb, maybe an adjective.

So links to my website are fine, while links to my website are inherently not. I also have a strong pet peeve around imperative tone, so I'd never write something like go to my website or follow this link.

rehevkor5• 1 year ago

Imperative would be appropriate for things like tutorials and howto pages.

rdiddly• 1 year ago

Makes sense to me, maybe I'm old too. Although things get murky when the link kicks off an action like downloading something. But it's still a noun if you think of it as "a download" or "a downloader."

afandian• 1 year ago

This advice distinguishes between the form (a link or button) and the content. I think it makes sense because you had other ways of knowing that it's a link than the content (underline, blue text, button border).

I guess this was written at a time when CSS was used relatively conservatively and, whatever the label of the button or link, it was clear you could click on it.

Somehow the current UX trend is to remove those underlines and boxes. I'm not sure how people are meant to intuit that something is clickable _except_ for the label.

nlawalker• 1 year ago

Somewhat related suggestion for other media like emails, docs, and chats:

Ctrl-K is the almost-universal shortcut for “insert hyperlink”, which is strongly preferred by everyone to a 237-character Sharepoint URL.

crazygringo5• 1 year ago

I couldn't disagree more. Their "bad" example:

To download W3C's editor/browser Amaya, _click here_.

Is extraordinarily clear. I'll click the link and it will either download directly, or it will be a download page.

In contrast:

Get _Amaya_!

That suggests a link to the Amaya website, not a download page. That's not effective for a download.

Similarly:

Tell me more about _Amaya_: W3C's free editor/browser that lets you create _HTML_, _SVG_, and _MathML_ documents.

This is terrible. It's not about downloading, and "tell me more" is the command, but not linked! For all I know, the "Amaya" link goes to a corporate landing page, not the "tell me more" information I actually need.

The conventional uses on the web are totally fine:

To download W3C's editor/browser Amaya, _click here_.
_Download Amaya_, the W3C's editor/browser.

The idea that links shouldn't be verbs seems very silly to me. Links should absolutely be verbs, when they involve an action like downloading or finding out more. Obviously that's different from "reference" links like in Wikipedia, where you're finding more about a topic.

And "click here" makes it exceptionally clear that a link isn't merely a reference link, but an action link. When I see:

Get _Amaya_!

That... doesn't tell me how to get Amaya. That tells me "Amaya" is a reference link, not a download link.

kqr• 1 year ago

I strongly dislike "click here" links because when I'm looking for a link, I want to read only the link-formatted words on a page to find the link I'm interested in. "Download Amaya" would be a great link. Just "Amaya" (unless leading to a page with information about Amaya, I suppose) or "click here" are not.

a3w• 1 year ago

I often want a second source to first check if that is trustworthy: copy paste amaya while having to not accidentally click it is annoying, since often linebreaks and multiword names or company+product splits occur. Selecting and reading text should be easy. Navigating HTML should be wanted, not accidental.

Therefore, the ``click here'' works best for me.

- "_Get Amaya_" should start a file transfer.

- "Get _amaya_ over there!"

  sounds like "okay next site will be info dump before actual download", which is acceptable to gather trust like brand or imprint recognition over there instead of googling now.

jkestner2• 1 year ago

Scannability is one of the reasons my formula is to link a complete descriptive phrase, like “Read more about hrefs,” or “take a survey on meeting times.” Links can be long, and probably doesn’t hurt SEO.

nulbyte• 1 year ago

Use a screen reader. Tab through the links. All you hear is, "click here." That's not helpful.

Build a search engine. What information does "click here" offer your index?

I agree with you that verbs don't seem all that problematic. Except when the verb is click and the object is here. I can stomach a link whose text is "Click Here to download Amaya," but if the link is literally just the two words, "click here," it is indistinguishable from others in many different contexts.

xanrah• 1 year ago

I'm sorry, should we design websites around SEO, or should search engines just use context properly?

rendaw• 1 year ago

At one point does accessibility decrease accessibility? I'm all for making improvements in the name of accessibility, but not so much about making things worse to support the least common denominator of screen readers. If people are going to need to change their behavior, wouldn't it be better to suggest some aria annotation instead?

layer88• 1 year ago

There are techniques to solve that, however:

https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG22/Techniques/html/H33

https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG22/Techniques/css/C7

danillonunes• 1 year ago

The problem here is that the screen reader will just read the link text and not the contract around it. In this case, the correct examples proposed by W3C will read just as "Amaya”, which are almost as unhelpful.

c22• 1 year ago

That's a programmed behavior of the screen reader and a limitation of the contextual awareness of the search engine. Apparently this has been an issue in the wild since at least 2001 so I don't know what to tell you.

crazygringo5• 1 year ago

That's a screen reader problem and search engine problem.

It would be an extraordinarily easy for screen readers to have a heuristic that whenever a link is just "click here" or common variations like "tap here", "click", etc., to read the entire sentence containing the link. It's not exactly rocket science. Yes, you need an internationalized list of strings to detect. Also, if aria-label is present, just use that.

Likewise, search engines are great at inferring meaning from the page as a whole. I'm not going to change my link text for the benefit of search engines.

tgsovlerkhgsel• 1 year ago

IMO that's the problem of the screen reader/search engine. It's a fine line between "accessibility" and actively making things worse (i.e. less accessible) for the majority just to cater to a small group of screen reader users.

That's similar to replacing all major doors in a building with automatic ones that can't be operated manually and take forever to open, despite the typical occupancy by wheelchair users being 0. Accessibility is great, but accessibility for few should not come at the cost of accessibility for most.

Gormo• 1 year ago

"Download Amaya" as the link text makes the most sense in your scenario. A link that just says "Amaya" isn't any better than one that just says "click here" -- neither is sufficiently conveying that clicking the link will download the software.

thousand_nights• 1 year ago

if i only read HN threads i'd assume 95% of users exclusively use some screen readers to read the web

it's become a trope to the point i know i can ctrl-f "screen reader" if literally anything ui related is being discussed

quietbritishjim• 1 year ago

> Get _Amaya_!
That suggests a link to the Amaya website, not a download page. That's not effective for a download.

In all their examples, the link is to the homepage of the Amaya website, not some download page (never mind the actual download).

It seems their message is watered down quite a bit by conflating the issue around "click here", which as other comments have said is an accessibility issue, with whether the text accurately reflects the target.

turboponyy• 1 year ago

Yea, the examples are wrong, and I'd interpret them the same way.

The principle is something I agree with and try to abide by, though.

layer88• 1 year ago

I mostly agree. One terminological difficulty is that, depending on the website, most users don’t “click” anymore, but “tap”, so something like “see here” could be more universal.

xp842• 1 year ago

Am I the only one who is amused by seeing UIs fuss about using “tap” vs “click”? Is there anyone who has ever gotten confused and started looking for a mouse to plug into their phone because something said “click the X button” instead of “tap” it?

sgustard• 1 year ago

The early web was full of these links. Over time more actions became buttons with direct labels. This replaced clearly bad link patterns like:

- To cancel this purchase [click here].

- To complete this purchase [click here].

1317• 1 year ago

I like "_To download W3C's editor/browser Amaya, click here_."

1-more• 1 year ago

"click here" makes sense in that context, but links can be viewed in the screen reader rotor, where they just show up as a list of links out of context. aria-describedby can help out, but if you just make the text inside the link better then you can avoid having to do that.

I do agree with you about verbs.

anotheryou• 1 year ago

Agreed.

I'd suggest:

_Download Amaya here_, W3C's editor/browser

W3C's editor/browser: _Download Amaya here_

eadmund• 1 year ago

It’s not really about clarity, or even about accessibility (although both of those are great!): it’s about what a Web page is. A Web page is a document which can link to other documents.

Links should absolutely be verbs

No, links imply a verb: ‘get.’ Buttons imply another verb: ‘post.’ It’d be awesome if there were ways in HTML to indicate other verbs, such as put and delete.

> Get _Amaya_!
That... doesn't tell me how to get Amaya.

No, it doesn’t: it is a document calling its reader to action. That’s something a document does: it tells a reader how to do something, or calls the reader to do something. Clicking is just an artifact of a particular technology at a particular point in time (heck, I imagine most people nowadays don’t click, because they are using smartphones — they tap instead).

iLoveOncall2• 1 year ago

Yes and we all know that websites are not built to be consumed by humans, so this argument makes perfect sense.

_ZeD_• 1 year ago

You don't get hyperlinks in a document-centric approach...

You think of them as action, they're not.

Actions are for applications. You are reading a document.

They are metadata.

Think of them like "footnootes" of a paragraph, or references.

Remember, you're reading a document, not using an application.

Diggsey• 1 year ago

Documents don't contain calls to action like "Download X" or "Tell me more about Y", so your argument falls down in relation to the examples presented by W3C.

dalmo3• 1 year ago

'Member the 80s?

chipsrafferty• 1 year ago

I don't read documents online. I use applications.

jakeinspace• 1 year ago

Besides screen readers, using a single descriptive noun as the link text might help for maintainability in some situations. First, it reduces the chances of a given link accidentally getting copied to another section by an unscrupulous maintainer. Second, in case of a dead link with a non-obvious URL (like maybe some ancient sourceforge link to a now renamed project), the link text is an extra bit of information to remind you if and how the dead link should be updated (assuming no comment exists). I admit that's a pretty minor benefit.

j0rd72• 1 year ago

A rule of thumb I've been following lately (when communicating in e.g. GH issues or Slack messages), is to use the title of the page where possible. Hopefully, the page title should reflect the page's content, and thus automatically works as a link title a lot of the time.

In your example, I would expect the download page of Amaya to be titled "Download Amaya", so my link can simply be "If you are interested, [Download Amaya]!"

make3• 1 year ago

I think that the goal was to help ppl move away from an overly verbose, printed document like style

kevinsync• 1 year ago

My stomach is churning already knowing I'm about to type a short-sighted hot take related to LLMs, but I do wonder what a screen reader would look like that could provide a "summarized" version of any given web page (assumingly via LLM). Basically allow the user to swap between the full page rendered with current methodology / presentation of content and links, and a version of the same page with a summarized version of the text content + a collated, deduped section of actions found in the content.

ex.

To download W3C's editor/browser Amaya, [click here].

[Download Amaya]

[Click here] to get Amaya for Windows

All collapse into something singular and sensible like [Download Amaya installer for Windows here] as an action inside the action section.

I don't know. I should probably put on a sleeping mask and navigate the web via a screen reader one of these days to really experience how things are.

lillecarl• 1 year ago

When we can run our own models that are good enough on local hardware (practically) it'll really take off, I believe AI accelerators in end user electronics will revolutionize how we utilize computers.

I don't know. I should probably put on a sleeping mask and navigate the web via a screen reader one of these days to really experience how things are. The difference is that it wouldn't be like experiencing it through a screen reader, it'd be like experiencing it with a screen reader that you can't use and will never be motivated enough to learn. Some blind people are known to listen to code in "reading speed" which is pretty incredible.

You'd be like standing on skis for the first time, or using Vim

orthoxerox• 1 year ago

It's not the best option for "action" hyperlinks, but I prefer it to making them look just like "information" hyperlinks.

For example, you have a page about... unemployment benefits. It has some body text that contains hyperlinks to other pages of the website, but at the end is has standalone paragraphs that say, "Click here to check your eligibility and apply online" and "Click here to log into the benefits portal". "Click here" identifies the things you are the most likely to do if you visit this page. This is much easier than scanning the body text for "the _residents_ of the _state_ can _apply online_ to sign up for unemployment benefits".

It's not the best option, an even better option it to pull out all "action" links into a separate panel, so it is typographically distinct from the rest of the page. Then the links can just say "check your eligibility and apply for benefits" and "log into the benefits portal".

t1234s• 1 year ago

If you find you are having to put instructions in your UI like "click here" you may have to rethink it to be more obvious. You don't want make your users have to think.

seydor• 1 year ago

"click here" links convert well, so people will use them

johnisgood• 1 year ago

To download W3C's editor/browser Amaya, click here.

"click here" should be a direct link to the latest version. You click on it, it should download the latest version.

mmaunder• 1 year ago

Ah I remember this when it came out. At the time the web was rife with click-here links. This had a huge effect on solving the problem. Might have appeared on Slashdot.

seanwilson• 1 year ago

It's worth emphasising that if something like "learn more" does work fine for non-screen-readers (like for a call-to-action button at the end of a section, which makes sense to me), you can add extra text just for screen readers so it reads something like "Learn more _about Amaya_" only on screen readers (via aria-label or a CSS class that hides text).

There's also SEO benefits here as well because the more descriptive text helps search engines understand what search keywords might be relevant for the page being linked to.

jfax• 1 year ago

I'm reminded of this post I read regarding links that read "I forgot my password". I thought maybe wording it as "click here if..." would improve that but I somehow intuitively knew that's not right either.

Ignoring the garbage on Web pages is a skill that some people don't have, and I don't know how to teach it. I'm reminded of this each time I try to help someone who doesn't have my background, use the Web; there are users who look at the literally first thing on the page and think about it carefully, even if it's "Please enable notifications," before they see the second item on the page at all.
With Google searches now offering multiple screenfulls of garbage before the actual results, well.
A related issue is failing to understand the epistemic status of different kinds of text on a page. E.g. the user who sees a clickable link with the text "I forgot my password" and believes that that means it's telling him he did forget his password (and it somehow knows this?), rather than just being the place to click if he forgot his password.
The death of UI standardization, of course, makes this issue much worse.

https://mstdn.io/@mattskala/113188291223682980

wvenable4• 1 year ago

If "I forgot my password" is visibly a button then it's more effective than a link in that context.

I remember when Microsoft removed many buttons from their UI and replaced them with vaguely colored text (links) and it became a lot harder to figure out what to click on.

mitchdoogle2• 1 year ago

I would go for a verb that matches what the user actually is doing, i.e. "Reset Password". Also, I think a panel with a red or yellow background coming up after a couple of unsuccessful attempts to login with a complete sentence, "If you have forgotten your password, please visit this link to reset your password"

xenadu02• 1 year ago

We should remember that UI conventions are mostly an arbitrary invention or are derivations of prior arbitrary inventions.

Users intuitively adapt themselves to the machine and developers adapt themselves to the users forming a feedback loop.

To put it another way: the meaning of language has probably been changed by so many websites and apps having an "I forgot my password" link. At least in that context most humans will adapt to understand the intent. Newer generations that have known nothing else won't even consider it to be worth their notice. In that sense there is also value in sticking to convention even if the convention makes no sense when considered in isolation.

ChrisArchitect• 1 year ago

A related site/discussion last October:

Don't use "click here" for link text

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41925658

smallerize• 1 year ago

Dragan Espenschied (despens) has an essay from 2022 about how link text has changed over time https://despens.systems/2022/06/button-pushes-you/ He identifies a shift from a call-to-action to button text describing the user: "Instead, they’re supposed to reconfigure the user’s state. Users have to accept the spelled out mantra and change their attitude before accessing the next piece of information."

pacifika2• 1 year ago

This is a well researched areas with subject experts, our opinion is large irrelevant.

yard2010• 1 year ago

Remember when googling "click here" led to the acrobat reader download page? I member!

sherburt3• 1 year ago

Always annoys me when people attempt to frame their personal preferences as a codified rule rather than a recommendation. All the examples seem fine with some being marginally better than others.

bitwize• 1 year ago

It's 2025. HTML is, first and foremost, a GUI toolkit. People have forgotten how hypertext works.

You want to see what good hypertext looks like? Check out: https://www.zetatalk.com

This lady has been promulgating her own brand of UFO kookery since the 90s, always in this same beautiful format. Nicely flowing prose, with only the relevant words turned into a link to delve further into the topic. Wikimedia also has very good practices.

But whenever I get depressed about the state of webshit, I glance back at ZetaTalk, a product of a different era, when hypertext was exciting, "surfing the web" to explore topics was a fun pastime, and anyone could put virtually anything they wanted online.

lucaspauker• 1 year ago

This seems like dogma

theletterf• 1 year ago

A similar a11y battle is positional language, for example" "The image below" is positional language that might not mean anything to visually impaired users or folks using different layouts.

swyx• 1 year ago

alternative proposal for 2025 update: Don't use "get started" as button text

iLoveOncall2• 1 year ago

They don't take their own (bad) advice. They have a "Learn more" link on their homepage: https://www.w3.org/QA/IG/

Anyway, I've learned long ago to ignore UI and UX advice coming from websites that look like theirs.

_Yguy_• 1 year ago

But... why?

briandilley• 1 year ago

None of this matters, considering that "click here" converts better by a long shot.

lysace• 1 year ago

Got any data on that?

ivanjermakov• 1 year ago

Linking manual for Wikipedia pages: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Li...

DonHopkins6• 1 year ago

...Unless you are linking to a discussion about how you should not use "click here" as link text.

DonHopkins6• 1 year ago

As ClickOps is to DevOps, ClickSplaining is to ManSplaining.

Nobody appreciates being talked down to with "click here" as if they can't figure out how to follow a link.

jrappswe• 1 year ago

Dumbest shit ever, in the case of a download, it SHOULD mention the word “download” in the actual link

neuroelectron• 1 year ago

"2001"

drellybochelly• 1 year ago

It's a reasonable CTA for simple cases, but definitely makes assumptions and presupposes a bit.

rednafi• 1 year ago

I’m reading the comments and thinking: only the HN crowd could get so worked up about something so trivial.

Animats• 1 year ago

"If you want to call your reader to action..."

This article is from a marketing perspective. It assumes that the goal of the web site is to get the user to click on the link. Not to offer the user the opportunity to get more detailed info if they want it.

einpoklum• 1 year ago

You don't have to be marketing anything. When putting links in a website, you are calling the visitor to action - the action of viewing other content or getting a file.

darqis• 1 year ago

The times when this was relevant are long past

wolpoli• 1 year ago

Articles in the 90s would suggest webmasters to use "click here" as link text to let users know that a hyperlink is clickable. The advice kind of make sense since hypertext was new back then and users need that little bit of help to navigate.

jcims• 1 year ago

I remember this, it stuck in my head and I never did it again. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

karaterobot• 1 year ago

Keep doing whatever you've been doing for the last 24 years, it's fine.

theendisney• 1 year ago

But my website is called go-here.nl

zzo38computer• 1 year ago

I mostly agree with the descriptions described there. However, sometimes a verb or verb phrase is appropriate, especially if it is "download", but then it should be a direct download link; the verb should be directly what it corresponds to and should make sense it context. Often a verb phrase would not be appropriate, though.

eightnoneone• 1 year ago

This is the internet hill I'll likely die on. A call-to-action is one thing, but a page that only links the word "here" is a hard fail of an author not understanding the hypertext medium.

I think of "click here" as stage direction mistakenly left in. When most authors write, they often don't write in a hypertext context. Instead of using a Markdown-like notation for links, they default to stage direction.

paulschreiber• 1 year ago

People are _still_ doing this shit. Unsubscribe links. Official government site. Fucking terrible.

mgdev• 1 year ago

Local LLMs will solve this.

unixhero• 1 year ago

I still use "Click here" in corporate america

ghushn3• 1 year ago

Consider not. There are many accessibility reasons to not, and corporate america has screen reader users in it too.

rs1862• 1 year ago

I don't see any concern of accessibility in the article, and to my knowledge there is no accessibility issue in any of the examples.

So who is w3 to say how people should and shouldn't use links? All that I see are just opinions, with no objective metrics/theories to back up their recommendations.

W3 should be in the business of setting up technical standards that go through rigorous processes, not creating nonsense like this.

Don’t use “click here” as link text (2001)

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