Accessibility+ Toolkit: Adding Accessible Hyperlinks: Overview [Faculty]

Description

The Moodle ISU Atto Editor has the capability to add hyperlinks to external resources directly within Moodle ISU activities and resources descriptions. When adding hyperlinks, it is important to keep accessibility and best practices in mind to ensure all users have a positive experience. 

This Guide Will Help You to:

• Recognize best practices for using hyperlinks in Moodle ISU

• Add a hyperlink using the Moodle ISU Atto Editor

• Seek further assistance

Recognize best practices for using hyperlinks in Moodle ISU

Using best practices to correctly format hyperlinks in Moodle ISU helps maximize the accessibility of your course and ensure an inclusive learning environment for all students.

What to avoid

• Using the long URL text.

  • Doing this can create a poor experience for users who use assistive technology which reads the text aloud as it is written. Lengthy URL text is difficult to understand and does not provide context for where the link will take users.

  • Example of link text to avoid: https://www.isu.edu/itrc

• Using vague descriptions such as “Click here” or “use this link”.

  • This does not give the user context for what the link will open.

  • This lack of context is particularly relevant for students who use assistive technologies, many of which provide shortcuts for navigating between links on a page. How would such a student easily differentiate between five different links that each say “click here”?

What to do

• Use descriptive names for each link to give the user context for what the resource or webpage link will open.

  • Example of meaningful link text: Instructional Technology Resource Center

• Indicate when a link is set to forcibly open in a new window.

  • Example: Instructional Technology Resource Center (opens in new window)

[Note: The Accessibility+ Toolkit in Moodle ISU allows users to choose whether a link will open in a new tab or not using a pop up window that appears anytime a link is selected that has the “Open in new window” box checked.]

• Ensure all links are working properly and that there are no broken links.

Add a hyperlink using the Moodle ISU Atto Editor

Inside any activity or resource in Moodle ISU, the Atto Editor can be used to add hyperlinks to external resources.

1. Locate the Moodle ISU Atto Editor in the activity or resource you are using.

2. In the Atto Editor text field, enter descriptive text for which you want to provide a link.

[Note: Descriptive text is the text that will be linked and it should describe the purpose or destination of the link.]

3. Copy the link for the external resource.

   1. Select the link for the external resource you want to hyperlink to to highlight it.

   2. Open the context menu (typically right-click on PC and Cmd-click on Mac) using your mouse and select “Copy” or Ctrl-c (Cmd-c on Mac). 

[Note: In this example, we are linking to the ITRC website, so the website address https://www.isu.edu/itrc was highlighted and copied.]

 

4. Back in the Atto Editor text field, select the text you want to link.

5. Select the Link button in the first row of the Atto Editor.

6. The Create link window will open.

7. Paste the link text you copied into the Enter a URL text field.

   1. Open the context menu (typically right-click on PC and Ctrl-click on Mac) and select “Paste” or Ctrl-v (Cmd-v on Mac). 

8. If you would like to avoid frustration in returning to Moodle ISU after selecting the link, select the Open in a new window box.

[Note: Inline with accessibility best practices, the students will be asked if they want the link to open in a new window or the same window.]

9. Select the Create link button.

10. The text you added the link to will now be an active link as indicated by the orange text color.

11. Select the Save and return to course button or the Save and display button when you are finished editing.

Seek further assistance

For additional assistance, please contact the ITRC at (208) 282-5880 or itrc@isu.edu.

This work was created by the Idaho State University Instructional Technology Resource Center and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.