One of the most common accessibility issues that UDOIT will flag is related to web links. The error message will be "Link Has Nondescript Text". However, they are also one of the easiest to fix!
What does this mean?
When UDOIT flags a link as having "nondescript text," it's telling you that you've provided only a bare URL on the page and have omitted a useful description of where that URL leads.
A bare URL looks like this: https://www.csustan.edu/basic-needs/warrior-food-pantry. On web pages, that bare URL is best placed "behind" normal descriptive, clickable text. For example: Warrior Food Pantry.
Writing links this way is an accessibility best practice. Why? Because screen reader software reads all text that is on a page. If that text contains a long, bare URL, the user has sit and listen to the reader read (or try to read) content that isn't meant to be read and often doesn't have any semantic meaning. URLs are just highly technical computer code that browsers and web servers use to communicate.
Where does nondescript text occur?
Nondescript text errors commonly occur in the course syllabus, such as in a "Campus Resources" section that contains a list of URLs for various support services provided by the university. All those bare URLs make for an increased cognitive load on screen reader users who must try to ascertain the meaning of a URL from its raw structure rather than being told simply, "web link: Warrior Food Pantry". All users are affected to some degree though!
Another common source of these errors is YouTube video URLs. Instead of pasting the bare URL, add the video's title as the text. Or, consider embedding the YouTube video player directly into a Canvas page so there's no need to paste a URL at all. Again, users do not gain any information from parsing the bare URL of a web destination.
Thus, anytime instructors simply paste a bare URL into Canvas, they are creating a nondescript text issue that will count against the accessibility rating of the course. Think before you paste!
UDOIT can help
Fortunately, fixing a nondescript error is often very easy and can be done right in the UDOIT tool. Click "Review" from the list of accessibility issues to open the remediation pop-up screen. From there, the instructor can supply descriptive text that will display on top of the bare URL. Or, the instructor can close the pop-up and edit the Canvas page in question to manually improve the link descriptions. In that approach, be sure to rescan the course in UDOIT to update the accessibility score.
Summary
Remember, link text should always be relevant to the content it's referring to.
- Don't hyperlink general words like "click here"
- Make every hyperlink unique in descriptive text
- Don’t force users to read the text surrounding a link to determine where it leads