A link is like a road sign on your information highway. It gives everyone cruising through your site clear directions on how to access the information in it. The more precisely and consistently you map out your links the faster others will be able to speed through the twists and turns of your site layout and graphics.

Here are some things for you to consider as you build your links. First how do your links describe the information people can find? What if someone wanted to get directions to your office? Would the link say “click here for directions to my office?” Using the phrase “click here” repeatedly in your link descriptions may make it a bit confusing visually. How about something very straight forward like “directions” or directions to my office.”

Some people with visual impairments use screen readers which speak both the links and text on a page. Speech software compensates for the absence of the mouse by using the tab key. Other people who don’t have the finger dexterity to use a mouse may also use adaptive software to move around your site. It is possible to keep the visual integrity of your web pages and still make them easy to use.

Another thing to consider when developing your site is how the links are arranged on the web page. Some people prefer to embed links as part of a paragraph of text. This is nice for those who like to go right to whatever they are reading about, but it can make searching for links a little more difficult. If you enjoy putting links into text then consider having a list of the links displayed either at the top or bottom of the page as well. This will allow people who don’t use a mouse to tab through the links easily.

One more handy thing to do when building your links is to insert a “skip navigation” link into your page. Adding a “Skip Navigation” link at the top of each new page allows users to skip right to the content of your page. (Note: there is a "skip navigation" link on this page. Choose "Edit" and "Select All" then see if you can find it. It's on the top of the page)

If you arrange a group of links on the same line it helps to put some kind of separator between them like a period mark. A link divider allows someone who is tabbing through your web page to determine which link he or she is on at any given time. You may also want to consider adding the tab index function to your hyperlinks so you can specify the order in which people tabbed to your links. This is especially helpful if you are presenting information in a sequential format.

More information is available at WebAIM: http://www.webaim.org/howto/basic-html/4

A few other places to get good information on creating accessible links:

http://www.shef.ac.uk/cics/accessibility/hyperlinks.html

http://www.great-web-design-tips.com/web-accessibility/302.html