Comments on: Click Here? No thanks. I have a Better Idea …

By: Is ‘Click Here’ the Best Choice? - Cibolo Media Services

Is ‘Click Here’ the Best Choice? - Cibolo Media Services — Fri, 15 May 2009 13:17:23 +0000

[...] company or with a client that won’t put “Click here” to rest? The article “Click here? No thanks!” offers a solution for developers to keep the links accessible even if visually “Click [...]

By: RMM accessible web

RMM accessible web — Sat, 31 May 2008 12:55:11 +0000

I would try and avoid “click here” whenever possible but has certainly become something of a de facto standard so suggesting a way to keep it but still remain accessible is a great idea.

By: Kai

Kai — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 06:32:35 +0000

There should have been code in my previous statement…

[a ...]Click here [span class=offscreen]to view our beautifull product xyz[/span][/a]

By: Kai

Kai — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 06:30:53 +0000

Another way – if there is no room for long link phrases – would be:

Click here to view our beautifull product xyz

So you have a visual short version wich expands in screenreaders nicely. Of course it is better to show the complety link to everybody…

By: Click Here -- It's Not About SEO! :: Unintentionally Blank

Click Here -- It's Not About SEO! :: Unintentionally Blank — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 21:43:22 +0000

[...] out what it was about. Or you could just click the link to find out, Mike Cherim alluded to this in a comment on Ian Lloyd’s compromise solution on Accessify. Clicking to find out what a link is all [...]

By: James

James — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 13:05:30 +0000

As I understand it, search engines will penalise pages that hide text by setting its colour to be the same as the background.
This is because it was once used to try and trick search engines into bumping that page up the rankings.
It will also still take up physical space on the page. Avoiding this is usually the reason why “More” or “Click here” links are used.

Maybe absolutely positioning the text off the screen would be an alternative?

See also the thread on this topic on the forum: http://www.accessifyforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=9067

By: Mike Cherim

Mike Cherim — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 21:28:24 +0000

Click here has the greatest click-through rate because users don’t know where the damn link leads and have to click it to find out! Not a good practice in my opinion, though I suppose there are instances where it’s perfectly fine (on a page by itself preceeded by text that makes it clear, but even that is weak becuase not all users will access the descriptive text as we want them to).

Regarding the spatial location of webby parts, I don’t mind using right, left, top, bottom, but one does have to consider that not all users will see it the same way. What I do in those rare instances when I do give a physical location like that is add to the statement, then using offset positioning I strip part of it away so it’s not visible, but will still be accessible. I only define the class in the screen style sheet. All others get the text (I do provide handheld and print style sheets regularly so this is possible).

Use the menu to the right, or at the bottom of the page if you're using a browser that offers the page differently, to get around this site.

I don’t use something like this very much, but IMO it can be helpful, especially if you really need to convey location to your core audience.

By: Harold

Harold — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 11:37:47 +0000

Thanks for the responses to my “click in the menu on the left” query. I agree with patrick h. lauke that it’s a sign of bad design, however the reality of the situation is that the layout (or code for that matter) of the site I spend a lot of time in is not under my control, it has zero semantic markup: headers are implemented with spans for example. I will look into the possibilities of adding redundant links instead.

By: Carlos

Carlos — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 10:34:41 +0000

@john, I’m afraid that this other alternative is even worse, as it suffer from the same problems as the first “compromise solutions” (see #5), and it additionally makes imposible for others than screen reader users to have an idea of what are they going to find if they follow the link.

By: John Faulds

John Faulds — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 01:01:09 +0000

Another alternative which has been written about before is to wrap the extra information that comes after ‘click here’ (in this case ‘to learn about widgets’) in a span and move it offscreen; it’s still read by AT users and SEs but doesn’t show on screen.